


Into the Devil's waiting mouth

by eden22



Series: Minimal Loss [4]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Kidnapping, Monster of the Week, Profiling the Winchesters, implied Dean/Cas because I do what I want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28324386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eden22/pseuds/eden22
Summary: “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the voice said, and Spencer turned his head to see Dean Winchester sitting next to him, a blank look on his face. He couldn’t help but glance down, needing visual confirmation that the thing pressing against him was what he thought it was. He wasn’t surprised to see the flash of a silver barrel, a handgun gripped easy and familiar in Dean’s hand.Whatever Spencer was expecting to happen on his vacation, stumbling upon two dead men in a diner definitely wasn't on the list.
Series: Minimal Loss [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918786
Comments: 34
Kudos: 277





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own!

Spencer still couldn’t believe that Hotch had threatened to put him on administrative leave. 

He could admit, maybe, that choosing to have his vacation days paid out at the end of the year rather than take any of them for the last couple of years wasn’t the best or most healthy thing for him to be doing, but what else was he supposed to do? When there was always another case, always people dying? Always the thought, the threat, of someone new, somewhere out there, waiting for them to arrive. Besides, he’d asked Hotch when his boss had confronted him about it, what would he even do on a vacation? Hotch had just stared at him, that familiar flat gaze piercing through Ried’s self-righteous indignation and, less than a month later, he had his answer for what he would do on vacation: eat a lot of terrible diner food, sleep in motels suffering through various different stages of decay, and wonder why he’d listened to Morgan’s suggestion that he take a road trip; exploring the country without the impetus of flying out to meet some new horror. 

The car that he’d rented had been getting increasingly dusty over the past week as he’d driven through the northern half of Montana. It had been funny, despite Morgan being the one to suggest a road trip to him, to see the look of horror on his friend’s face when he’d finally told him where he’d decided to go. He suspected that Morgan had thought that he would go somewhere a lot warmer, and with a lot more beaches. He liked the cold, late autumn air that followed him around here though, the highway stretching out long and uninterrupted before him, the trees covering the land around him becoming increasingly speckled through with the orange flames of fall. The stars at night were startlingly bright, and most days he saw more cows than people. For as much as he’d complained about it, he had to admit that he was slightly sad that his time away was coming to a close, that it would be less than a week before he was boarding a plane in Seattle and headed back to DC. There was something strangely comforting about the desolate landscape of these northern prairies and forests, the way that he spent most days feeling more and more centred by his insignificance in the greater spin of the universe. He felt settled, anchored to the present in a way he hadn’t felt in what seemed like years. After all, it’s hard to remain tangled in your own past, your own head, with the sky spinning out above you and the cracks in the asphalt reminding you that this land had been here long before you, and would continue to be there long after you were gone. 

He wasn’t sure the name of the town he’d stopped in for lunch, just knew that the coffee was strong enough to make even him blink in surprise, and that the waitress had called him hon when she’d come to take his order. He’d half expected the older woman to ruffle his hair when she’d brought him his food, but she just set it down with a smile before walking away to ask the men in the booth behind him if they needed a top up. The vinyl of the booth might have been peeling up at the edges, the corners of the table chipped, and a mysterious stain covering most of the seat opposite him explaining why no one else had taken this booth, but the food was perfect, and Spencer found himself eating almost without chewing. There had been a copy of the local paper abandoned at the table by a previous customer, and Spencer began idly flipping through it. The second page was dominated by a story about the suicide of one of the town’s residents, only sixteen. An earlier suicide of another teenager was also mentioned, and Spencer wondered if the second had been a copycat, and if the town had more tragedy yet coming its way. He sighed, pushing the paper away from him before he lost his appetite entirely. He wasn’t here to worry about things beyond his control, he was here to– 

“Oh fuck you,” a voice came from right behind him, unexpectedly loud, and it was only years of training that kept Spencer from jumping in surprise. He couldn’t, however, help but turn his attention towards the male voice. From the automatic scan of the diner he’d made when he’d come in, he knew there were two men in the booth he’d sat next to, though he hadn’t been able to see enough of them to get anything more than the general idea of largeness, and the tops of two heads of hair, bent towards each other. 

“Fuck me?” a different voice responded. “Fuck _you_ man.” Spencer had a second of worrying that a fight was about to break out, but though the voices were loud, and aggressive, neither man seemed to be truly angry. 

“Look, all I’m saying is that–”

“All you’re saying is that you want to, to tear baby apart–”

“It’s an iPod Dean, I’m not suggesting we paint the car fuckin’ neon green or something, I just want–” Spencer smiled involuntarily. Definitely not a real fight, and nothing he needed to worry about. Still, they were loud enough that he kept listening, enjoying the familiarity written into every word of the conversation vollying back and forth between the two men, the way they spoke over each other without pause, words and sentences intertwining and spinning together in a well-worn dance. Old friends, or maybe brothers. 

“To play your teenie-bop girl music, yeah, I kno–”

“To listen to _something_ that was recorded after like, 1983 dude, music didn’t stop with CCR and Black Sabbath. And–”

“Hey, I listen to stuff from after 1983–”

“ _And_ it’s all on fucking casette too, like dude, you’re not just one technology behind, you’re like five–”

“Listening to it on cassette is the best way to do it, the audio–”

“And it _ate_ Zeppelin IV, dude you almost cried–”

“I did _not_ almost–” 

“You can’t tell me you seriously don’t think that it would be better to be able to listen to more things.”

“I absolutely fucking can, you wouldn’t know good music if it bit you on the ass, you– you _philistine_.”

“Philistine? _Philistine_? Are you fucking kidding me Dean I swear to god–”

“You probably just want to play like, Justin Beiber or something and then I’m going to have to drive the car off a cliff.”

“Jesus Christ why do you always have to be such a fucking drama queen about everything?”

“ _I’m_ the drama queen? Me? Seriously, I–”

“Yeah, you’re the drama queen, have you even met you? You–” 

“Hon? Refill?” Spencer started, drawn out of his blatant eavesdropping by the waitress standing over him, coffee pot in hand. By the look on her face, and the way her eyes briefly cut to the booth next to his, he figured he’d been caught out, and offered her a sheepish smile even as he answered in the affirmative. She smiled at him as she poured the coffee, something conspiratorial in her face implying that she didn’t blame him for listening in at all. Still, being caught out was embarrassing enough that Spencer forced his attention completely back to his own table, the remains of his lunch and the last jolt of caffeine that would get him through to his next stop that night. He did note when one of the men got up to head across the diner, passing his table. He’d been right, when he’d thought of them as large earlier – even from behind, his figure partially obscured by a large canvas jacket, the breadth of the man’s shoulders spoke to what Spencer knew would be a heavily muscular build. He was easily 6’4”, though the way he slouched slightly made it hard to know for sure. The jacket was worn but clean, and accompanied by faded denim jeans and heavy work boots. Blue-collar, Spencer decided as he tracked the man across the diner. Possibly something in construction, going by physical strength, though there were plenty of other possibilities. There was something about him, his build or maybe the way he moved or maybe it was the long brown hair brushing the collar of the flannel shirt just peeking out over the top of his jacket… _something_ about him was familiar, but Spencer couldn’t quite place it, and finally dismissed it as simply an echo of years of profiling. He’d be lying if he said that years of doing this work didn’t get to him sometimes, didn’t make him constantly overly attentive and on alert. He did note the door that the man disappeared into though, before returning his attention to draining the final dregs of his coffee. He would definitely need to visit the bathroom himself before he left, and it was good to know where it was. 

The waitress came by again, and Spencer paid his bill with a smile. She left, and as she stepped away, Spencer saw that the man had left the bathroom, was headed back to his table. Their eyes met, and Spencer had to fight every single instinct in him to keep his facial expression still, to keep his body in his seat, to not try and reach for a weapon that he didn’t have on him, _fuck he didn’t have his gun, he didn’t have anything, he didn’t have anything and– and–_

Sam Winchester’s eyes travelled over Spencer without even a flicker of recognition crossing his face, and he walked past Spencer’s booth without pause, back to the same booth that he and– Dean, he’d said _Dean_ , Dean was alive too, both of the Winchesters were alive, somehow, and _here_ and Spencer was totally, completely, alone. Spencer felt like he was shaking with the sudden rush of adrenaline that had washed through him, his mind flicking through all of the possibilities. He could try and raise the alarm, alert the civilians to the predators in their midst, but the Winchesters were so unpredictable in their MO that while there was currently a good chance that no one in the diner was actually in danger, that might change very quickly if Spencer was to provoke the Winchesters by trying to get the civilians away from them. He could text someone on his team, who could then call the local police, but who knew how long that might take, if the Winchesters would even stay here long enough for backup to arrive. Spencer could follow them himself of course, but that had its own dangers. He swallowed, the half of his mind that wasn’t trying to figure out what to _do_ busy straining to catch any part of the renewed conversation happening behind him, but they were apparently done shouting at each other, their conversation now nothing more than an indistinct rumble of deep voices buried under the sound of the radio and the chatter of the other diners. He was lucky, at least, that Sam hadn’t recognized him, that Spencer still had that slim advantage of surprise. He would text JJ, he decided. She would be able to alert the locals, and if the Winchesters left before they got here, he could follow them, and Garcia would be able to use the GPS on his phone to track him and the Winchesters both. He thought about what had happened the last time someone had tried to apprehend the Winchesters, and then just as firmly pushed that thought away. He wasn’t Henriksen, and he wasn’t going to let the Winchesters get their hands on whatever types of explosives they’d used to fake their deaths in Monument five years ago. He would be curious, to learn how exactly they had managed that one, he thought as he slid his hand into his pocket, fingers just brushing against the hard plastic of his phone case when he felt more than heard movement next to him, the brush of air being displaced his only warning before something was touching his side and a low, deep voice was speaking in his ear. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the voice said, and Spencer turned his head to see Dean Winchester sitting next to him, a blank look on his face. He couldn’t help but glance down, needing visual confirmation that the thing pressing against him was what he thought it was. He wasn’t surprised to see the flash of a silver barrel, a handgun gripped easy and familiar in Dean’s hand. He kept his breathing calm, even, as he looked back up at the other man. 

“I have money,” he said, “I don’t know what you… you can have my money.” Winchester gave him an unimpressed look. 

“Nice try,” he said, “but Sam already recognized you. Now, unless you want to watch as we put a bullet in the head of every single person in this fine establishment, you’ll come with us, you won’t make a sound, and you’ll keep your hands out of your pockets. Got it?” Spencer paused for a second, pretending to consider, but he already knew what his answer would be, had already run through all the possibilities and come up with the only answer he could give. The Winchesters were more than capable of mowing down an entire diner if they wanted to, had massacres aplenty attributed to them over the years leading up to their supposed deaths. 

“Okay,” he said, keeping steady eye contact with Winchester. He looked back just as steadily, considering, before he finally nodded. 

“Okay,” he echoed, and the pressure of the gun disappeared from Spencer’s side, though he was under zero delusions that he was any less in danger with it gone. Winchester slid out of the booth, standing to the side to let Spencer do the same. Spencer kept his eyes on him as he turned and led them out of the diner, aware of the looming presence of the other brother following after him, keeping him sandwiched between the two of them as they passed by tables filled with civilians still unaware of the monsters leaving them behind. As soon as they were free of the inside of the diner, the younger Winchester was up against his back, the brush of something against the fabric of his jacket more than enough to let Spencer know that there was a weapon once again aimed towards him. He wondered if it was a gun, if there was a chance of disarming Sam and using it against them. Sam tended to be the one with an affinity for knives though, visions of gory photos pinned to a corkboard sliding through his head, and if it was a knife Spencer would stand no chance against Dean and his gun, if he could even manage to get it off of Sam. Based on their previous arrests, there was also little-to-no chance that those were the only weapons that either of them had on them. He dismissed the entire idea, continuing to follow after Dean instead as he led them around the back of a building, taking them to a quiet spot between two dumpsters, and Spencer realized with a quiet sort of shock that they intended to kill him right there, without preamble or delay. He had assumed they would want to take him with them, a chance to indulge the urge to torture that previous crime scenes had provided plenty of evidence of. He supposed he did present a unique threat though, he thought, feeling strangely detached in the face of his impending death. He really didn’t think it would end like this, in some small town he didn’t even know the name of, the result of horribly bad luck and little else. He went where he was guided easily, mind still desperately searching for a way out even as the rest of him went numb with fear. 

He really, really didn’t want to die. 

“You got it Sam?” Dean asked as they turned Spencer around, his back to the wall, completely penned in by another wall and a large metal dumpster. He’d been wrong, he realized, glancing down at Sam’s hands and the gun he was holding, though he knew it didn’t really make a difference, the chances of him getting the drop on one of them, much less both of them, still incredibly low. He was well trained, but both of them outweighed him significantly, and he was versed enough in their crimes to know that they had received extensive training of their own, though of a different sort. The combination of their father’s paramilitary training throughout their childhood and their adult habits made them more dangerous than possibly anyone Spencer had ever faced before, certainly more dangerous than anyone he’d ever faced _alone_. Trying to attack either of them physically, unless something about their dynamic changed drastically, would be a mistake. He also couldn’t yet discount the possibility that they would enact retribution for any action he might take on the civilians still so close to where they had led him. 

“Yeah,” Sam said, not talking his eyes off of Spencer. Dean nodded, and then to Spencer’s surprise disappeared, leaving his brother alone with the agent. Sam’s eyes on Spencer were steady, unwavering, and Spencer wondered why they hadn’t killed him yet. Maybe they _did_ intend to torture him, though to do it right behind the diner was far more disorganized behaviour than they typically exhibited. He had his answer a couple of seconds later though, when the rumble of the engine of a car broke the silence stretching between them, and the familiar black body of their infamous vehicle pulled into view, Dean behind the wheel. He parked it, fully blocking Sam and Spencer into their little corner, before stepping out, ropes in hand. Spencer tried not to panic, even as Dean walked closer to him. 

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Dean said, in a tone of voice that was probably meant to be soothing, but was too laced with resignation to read as genuine. He didn’t think that Spencer would believe him and he was right, Spencer’s heart pounding in his ears as Dean finally reached him, taking hold of his shoulder and spinning him around. 

“Please,” Spencer said as Dean gathered both of his hands together. “You don’t want to do this.” Behind him, Dean snorted but didn’t say anything. Spencer tried to keep his wrists flexed to keep as much looseness in the ropes as possible, but a sharp blow to his lower back sent his muscles loosening in reflex, and he lost that small advantage as Dean pulled the ropes tight. He reached into Spencer’s pocket, pulling out the phone and the keys to his rental car. 

“Here,” he said, and there was movement behind him before he was turned around just in time to watch as Sam pulled out the SIM card before pocketing both the card and the phone, along with the keys. Dean shoved at him before he had time to take in much more, and Spencer stumbled forward, towards the car. He felt less surprised than resigned when the man steered him towards the trunk, popping open the lid as his other hand kept ahold of Spencer’s arm. 

“Can you climb in or do you need help?” he asked, and Spencer stared down into the dark space. 

“I can climb in,” he said. _At least I’m still alive_ , he thought as Dean prodded at him until he climbed inside the small space. _Alive, I have a chance,_ he thought as the trunk shut behind him, throwing him into pitch blackness. 

He tried to keep track, while they drove, of what turns the car took, but it was disorienting, more difficult than he had expected to distinguish a curve in the road from a turn, and he was certain that he would struggle if he tried to retrace their steps, if he could manage it at all. It was a long drive too, adding to the difficulty, and he was pretty sure Dean backtracked a couple of times as well, as if he knew that Spencer might be capable of figuring out where they were going. Eventually, they turned onto a gravel road, the rough surface sending Spencer bouncing off of the floor again and again. His body was aching by the time the vehicle rolled to a stop, and a door slamming sent a final jolt through the frame of the car. There was the sound of another vehicle arriving, then silence as it stopped as well, before voices cut through the air. He couldn’t make out what they said, though the tone suggested anger. Finally, they stopped, and there was the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, drawing closer and closer until finally the lid of the trunk was once again swung open, leaving Spencer blinking at the sudden onslaught of the late afternoon light. Dean stood silhouetted against the slightly overcast sky, an unimpressed expression on his face before he sighed, reaching into the trunk to help Spencer out. He stumbled as his feet hit the ground, cramped after so long bent up to fit into the trunk, and Dean tugged at him impatiently. Spencer glanced around them as he let Dean lead him forward. They were in a forest, nothing around other than the small gravel road they had come up, and his rental car. He blinked at it, realizing that Sam must have driven it over. So that it wouldn’t raise suspicion, he thought with a sinking feeling, so that it wouldn’t draw any attention, abandoned in the parking lot. Turning his head, he realized they were headed towards a log cabin tucked into one end of the small clearing. It looked clean, well-maintained, and had a large brass ‘3’ on the door. A resort cabin, he realized, glancing again at the woods around them and this time spotting the vague outline of another cabin through the slightly less dense trees to the left of the building. 

“Can you believe we’re the only ones here right now?” Dean said, his tone conversational as he led Spencer up the wooden stairs and onto the front porch. “Guess we’re far enough into the offseason that there’s just not that many people looking to head up to a cabin in the woods in the middle of the week.” The message of _so no one will hear you if you scream_ was unspoken but, Spencer thought wryly as he watched Dean reach forward to swing open the screen door, very much received. Dean nudged him forwards, and Spencer went easily. No point fighting right now, with his hands indisposed. It would just anger his captors, maybe provoke them into violence. Better to wait, to see what they had planned for him, to evaluate what additional options the interior of the cabin might offer him. 

Sam was in the small kitchen area as they entered, though he turned around almost immediately, holding one of the wooden kitchen chairs. Spencer eyed it, his stomach sinking even further. The chair was sturdy, and if they tied him to it half as well as they’d tied his hands together, there was little chance he’d be able to break free of it. Sure enough, Dean’s hand landed on his shoulder, heavy and inescapable, and guided him over and down. He gave brief thought to trying to get away, making a break for it in the few moments when the brothers would be forced to untie him before retying him to the chair, but quickly dismissed it. Even if he was able to get out of the cabin without either of them catching him, which was unlikely to begin with, he didn’t know where the keys to either cars were, or how far he was from any other person, from the town where they had grabbed him. His best bet, even as they tied him down, was to wait until he’d figured out the best approach to take with them. He had the profile they had done for them years ago tucked away in the back of his head, had run through it on the long drive to the cabin, but it was years out of date. Though it was unlikely that a pathology as deeply rooted as either of the Winchesters’ would change significantly over the years, the fact that they had managed to stay off of law enforcement’s radar ever since their supposed deaths spoke to what might be an increased level of restraint – and the profile was only ever based on circumstantial evidence and secondhand accounts to begin with. No formal psychological interview had ever been conducted with either brother, no long, intense interrogation conducted. If he lived long enough to do so, there was a very good chance that Spencer would be the first person to ever be able to witness the full spectrum of each brother’s driving force, their modus operandi.

Spencer tested the ropes when the brothers finally stepped away from him, but they held as secure as he had already resigned himself to. Instead of focusing on the spike of dread that that sent through him, he glanced around the room, forcing his attention onto what he could observe rather than that which he could not change. The cabin was a single room, small but not cramped, with a single door which he assumed led to a bathroom, since there was a kitchen area, large bed, and couch within eyesight. It was nice, but Spencer could understand why there wasn’t – if Dean was telling the truth – anyone else currently staying out there. Even in the middle of the day the room was cool, and as far as he could tell the small wood-burning stove in the corner was the only source of heat. There was no fire going at the moment, and he could only hope that the brothers would light one at night, if he was still alive by then. At that thought, his attention slid back to the two men having a hushed argument in the kitchen area, their heads bent together. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, couldn’t see enough to try and read their lips, and he tried not to spend too much time contemplating the possibility that they were simply arguing about how they wanted to finish him off. He ran back through what he knew about them. Though early evidence had pointed towards Dean being a sadistic killer, the dominant of the two, their final profile had concluded that that role fell to the younger brother, with the older one acting as protector and enabler, his own urges guided more by his brother’s hand than his own. As they had grown and Sam’s sadism and killing urge had developed, he’d learned to take advantage of the delusions taught to his brother by their father in order to manipulate the older man and satisfy his own desires at the same time. He flashed back to the article he’d seen earlier, the two dead teenagers, and wondered if that was why the brothers were in town, if Sam had concocted some sort of monster to blame for the tragedy in order to set the stage for him and his brother to kill. If they were, if Sam had manipulated his brother’s pathology, turning his gaze on some innocent person, or persons, in town, they wouldn’t leave until they were dead. In a way, that was a relief – even with the unexpected twist that Spencer posed, Sam wouldn’t be willing to relinquish a victim, and Dean would be unable to walk away without the resolution of having completed the hunt his brother had sent them on. It might give Spencer some time, so long as Sam didn’t decide he was too dangerous to wait for them to kill their original target, or targets, before turning their attention on him. He tried not to think what would happen if Sam decided that he couldn’t be left alive that long, or what would happen to him after they concluded things with whatever victim(s) they had picked out. He tried not to think about the fact that no one, not a single solitary person, knew where he was, or that it would be at least five days before anyone would even realize he was missing. He tried not to think about his phone, tucked away somewhere, and Hotch’s strict instructions that no one bother him while he was on his trip. 

“–fuck are we supposed to do with him?” Dean’s rising volume drew Spencer’s attention back to the two men, though he carefully kept his gaze away from them, not wanting to alert them to the fact that they were now speaking loud enough for him to hear. Sam’s response was quieter, but Dean’s “He’s a fucking fed Sammy,” was all too clear. His stomach sank. He’d been hoping that Dean’s sense of justice, his belief that he was aligned with the side of good against the evil underbelly of the world would be the impulse that would win out with regards to him, but instead it sounded like Spencer’s presence had triggered his protective instinct instead, had categorized him as nothing other than a threat to his younger brother. Out of the corner of his eye he watched the way that Dean leaned into his brother’s space, his face drawn into a frown even as his voice again lowered to a harsh whisper. Unable to make out any words, Spencer focused on analysing the brother’s body language, the way they looked. They stood close enough together for it to be odd, both of them intensely, singularly focused on the other, in stark defiance of the fact that there was ostensibly a threat, however neutralized, also in the room with them. He didn’t know if it spoke to a confidence that he posed no real danger to them, or if they were always like this when they were alone together, with their attention finally allowed to narrow down to the only person that either of them considered truly important. While Dean’s worldview might allow for him to experience some empathy, some emotions, towards people other than his brother, it was unlikely that Sam’s pathology led him to see any person as having value outside of what he could get from them. Spencer wondered how Dean fit into that, as an exemption. It could be nothing more than the utility posed by his brother – that Dean would protect him if they were confronted by law enforcement and civilians alike, that he could use him as a tool to help him live out his own desires, that their whole lives, Dean had proved that he would put his brother above all others, that Sam could always count on him to be _useful_. If it was that, there was always the possibility that Sam would one day turn on his brother, as soon as he no longer saw him as usable, that Dean only survived his brother’s killing instinct due to his utility. If that was the case, there was also the twin question of the extent to which Dean was aware of the axe ever suspended above his neck, the inevitability of his fate to die at the hands of the only person in his life he’d ever truly cared for. It was something that Spencer could potentially poke at, could use to drive a wedge between the two of them, though as a tactic it was one just as likely to end in his blood being spilled as any other possible outcome. 

As he watched them though, Spencer began to suspect that it might be the other option, the one that was far less likely given Sam’s likely status as a psychopath but one which would provide a clear explanation of how Dean had survived his whole life living alongside an unfeeling and unsentimental killer. The possibility that, however incapable Sam might be of feeling anything even remotely resembling empathy or sympathy towards other people, how alien the sensations of love and care were for him, that his brother posed the single exemption; that the boy who had raised him had managed to become the sole escapee from Sam’s disconnected attitude towards his fellow humans. Whether it was something based in emotion or a cold calculation that labelled Dean as _his_ in a way that would tolerate no harm coming to him, even at his own hand, was a different question entirely. 

As Spencer watched, Sam reached out, gripping his brother’s arm, and Spencer spent a single, surprised second thinking that it must be the second of the two options before he realized that Sam was swaying slightly, his face gone drawn and pale. Spencer’s eyes widened as he scanned Sam more intensely than he had before, the fog of terror and adrenaline that had hovered around his vision since the diner finally clearing. The clothes he was wearing were ill-fitting he noted, as if Sam had lost a large amount of weight. His face too showed the signs of significant weight loss, his cheeks hollow in a way that was unfamiliar to the last images that had been taken of him. It had been years, but time alone wouldn’t explain the fact that the man was clearly underweight, that the change was probably recent, if he hadn’t bought clothing that fit better. His hair seemed to be thin as well, hanging lank and dry around his face, and the dark circles under his eyes seemed especially pronounced in the early afternoon light coming in through the window. _He’s sick,_ Spencer realized with a sudden jolt. He took in the furrow of Dean’s brow, the way he hadn’t reacted to his brother needing to use him to steady himself. _He’s been sick for a while,_ he thought, _long enough for Dean to be used to him being weaker because of it._ He would have to keep that in mind – depending on what it was, how long it had been going on, it could change both men’s behaviours in ways that he couldn’t predict. As much variation as there was in the ways in which both Sam and Dean acted out their urges and delusions, there was a consistency in their guiding motivation that could abruptly shift with a change in the dynamic that existed between the two of them. Not that he fully knew or understood what it had been in the first place, he thought, unable to keep the feeling of defeat at bay for a long moment. _How was he supposed to figure out how Sam being sick would change?_

“Sammy!” Dean’s voice, loud again, drew him away from that particular spiral, and he watched as the older brother pointed towards Spencer. Spencer felt a jolt of fear travel through him, could only hope it wasn’t outwardly visible as Sam glanced in his direction. “Sit down before you fall down, I mean it,” Dean continued, and Spencer realized that he hadn’t actually been pointing at Spencer, a conclusion proved correct when Sam sighed, heavy and weary, and shuffled past Spencer to all but collapse onto the couch. Dean glared at his brother for a moment before his gaze slid over Spencer. Something flashed through his eyes, too quick for Spencer to analyze, before he was turning back to the kitchen, muttering under his breath as he rattled through the cupboards. Sam meanwhile, had grabbed a book off of the haphazard stack on top of the table, leaning back with a groan and beginning to read as if Spencer wasn’t even there, as if he was just an ordinary person, as if there was anything about what was happening that was normal and okay. The table was covered in books and papers, and now that Spencer was looking in that direction properly he saw that there were even more papers on the wall, tacked up photos and a large map of the town. He couldn’t quite make out what the photos were of, but by the wash of red covering most of them, he could guess. He swallowed. So Sam liked to keep trophies, keep photographs. He wondered to what extent that was an indulgence versus a compulsion, if it was something he simply wanted or if it was something he _needed_. 

“Sammy, where…?” Dean said, voice coming from so close behind him that Spencer wasn’t able to help the way he twitched away from the sudden sound. Sam looked over to Spencer, then behind him where Dean must have stood. 

“You’re out,” Sam said, “we were going to hit the liquor store after lunch, remember? Before we ran into…” he trailed off, jerking his head towards Spencer. There was a short silence before Dean spoke again. 

“Right,” he said, voice tight and clipped. “Ok, well, I’m going back into town then. You need anything?” Sam shook his head, no, and then Dean reentered Spencer’s line of sight, headed towards the cabin door. He turned at the door, looking at Spencer then back at his brother. “If you do need something, call me ok? Or Cas.” Sam waved at him, leaning back and settling himself further into the couch. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be fine.” Dean spared a final look towards Spencer before nodding, fast and jerky and then the door was shutting behind him before Spencer could even think to protest, leaving Spencer alone with the younger brother. The silence that lasted from the time that the door banged shut to the sound of the Winchesters’ car starting filled the clearing was thick with anticipation. Spencer didn’t know what it meant, him being left alone with Sam, if it was nothing more than convenience, Dean picking up the errands that they’d had to abandon in order to abduct him, or if it was intentional, Dean giving his brother the space he needed to… to do whatever he was planning on doing to Spencer. Though if Dean had left just to get alcohol – left his sick brother alone with a hostage, something that was clearly a potentially volatile and threatening situation – that might speak to a wholly other driving force behind both of the brothers’ behaviours. He glanced at Sam again, his skinny wrists, pale and vulnerable, sticking out from the sleeves of his flannel, and wondered if addiction might be the source of the younger brother’s physical deterioration. Before he could tug any further at that thread to see where it might take him however, the silence that had been left in the wake of the car was finally broken by the sound of Sam beginning to violently cough, his entire body jerking forward with the force of the ugly, wet sounds. Something dark sprayed out of his mouth across the table before he managed to bury his face in the crook of his elbow, the final minutes of his coughing fit spent bent in half and muffled into the fabric of his sleeve. When the coughing finally subsided the cabin was left in absolute silence, punctured only by the ragged gasping breaths of Sam as he struggled to recover his breathing. When he finally raised his head, he glanced first at the sleeve of his shirt, then the table in front of him, then at Spencer, who had to fight not to react to the younger brother’s attention falling on him. To his surprise, the look on his face was half contrition, half embarrassment. He smiled, a small, shaky thing, and Spencer realized that his teeth were covered in blood, that it was smeared over his chin. As he watched, Sam absently wiped at his chin with the clean sleeve of his shirt, his attention drifting back to the table. 

“Fuck,” he said softly, and Spencer followed his gaze to see the familiar sight of blood splattered across the detrius of ordinary life, bright red staining papers and books alike. Sam gathered up everything that had blood on it with a quick franticness that seemed to take him over all at once, piling them up before standing. He swayed, face going white, and Spencer couldn’t do anything but sit there and watch as Sam’s body obviously gave very serious consideration to tipping into the blackness of unconsciousness. In a move that seemed more sheer force of will than anything else though, Sam blinked his way through it before slowly making his way into the kitchen, balling up the papers and shoving them deep within the garbage. As he turned he began unbuttoning his shirt, before he disappeared from Spencer’s eyeline, headed towards the bed at the back of the single room. There was rustling, then the sound of running water, and Spencer realized that he must have gone into the bathroom. When he reappeared it was with his face flushed, hair slicked back with water that sent the occasional drop running down his face. Spencer wasn’t surprised to see that he had changed into a fresh shirt, but he was surprised when Sam gave him a sheepish look before tentatively lowering himself back onto the couch. 

“Sorry,” he said, sounding strangely like he meant it. “Um… we can just keep that between the two of us, right?” Spencer blinked at him once, twice. “Just… don’t tell Dean,” Sam said, tacking on “please.” Spencer nodded. 

“Of course,” he said, trying to project friendly, reassuring, and non-threatening even as his mind raced to make sense of this newest development. Dean knew Sam was sick, Spencer was sure of that, that knowledge written into every action, every word, Dean had performed towards his brother since they’d gotten to the cabin. That Sam was still trying to hide the severity of his illness, or at least some of it’s symptoms, from him was an unexpected turn of events. That he was coughing up blood yet another. The list of things that would cause someone to cough up that much blood, that violently, wasn’t long but it was deadly. 

_Was Sam dying?_ Spencer thought, watching as the tall man ran a shaky hand through his hair before picking up the book that had been dropped onto the floor when his body had become overtaken with the coughing fit. He felt almost nauseated at the thought, of how unpredictable it would make them. Sick was one thing, sick might change the dynamic between them, might elevate Dean’s protector role, might cause the younger to temporarily wholly subsume his own needs in deference to his brother’s, but dying… If Sam was dying, whether Dean knew about it or not, it would make his behaviour entirely unknowable. Death made men unpredictable, even ones far less deadly and calculated than Sam Winchester. Dying, Sam would be realizing he was losing the physical advantage that he’d held over his brother since they were teens, and potentially his intellectual advantage as well, depending on what illness was causing his body to rot from the inside out. Dying, Sam would be realizing that he would never get to fulfill that final, greatest fantasy of killing his brother, not unless Dean willingly submitted himself to his brother’s blade. Which, Spencer corrected himself, he might very well be willing to do. There had been little that Dean had ever shown himself unwilling to do for his brother, and dying might very well not be one of them. Living without him might actually be the one he wasn’t willing to face. Sam dying would be a greater threat to his worldview than Dean had ever faced, and would force him to, for the first time in his entire life, take sole ownership over his own urges and the delusions that guided him. 

Spencer tried not to be too obvious as he continued to observe Sam, who was now leaning fully back into the couch, his eyes blinking with the heavy weight of exhaustion even as he continued to attempt to read the weighty leather tomb that he seemed just barely able to lift. His hands were shaking, and his face was pale and drawn. He was now pretty certain that Sam wasn’t planning to do anything to him while his brother was gone. Whether that was due to wanting his brother to play a role or witness, or simply because he lacked the physical strength necessary to indulge in the same activities he had previously was a question Spencer couldn’t answer. Though he supposed if it was the first, he would find that out as soon as Dean returned from wherever he’d gone. He tried not to think about the fact that there was currently a killer, unsupervised and unmoored, potentially consumed with the collapse of his own personal guiding star, wandering around town. It wouldn’t help anything, to obsess over what Dean Winchester _might_ be doing while he wasn’t in Spencer’s eyesight. If, _if_ he was seeking out a new victim, there was every chance that he wouldn’t strike without his brother’s say-so. And if he brought someone else back, shoved another stranger into the trunk of that black metal cage of a car… there wasn’t anything that Spencer could do about that either, not until Dean returned. So instead, he focused on Sam, and focused on reviewing again everything he knew about the Winchesters. 

They had grown up without roots or personal attachments, raised by an ex-Marine with delusions that monsters were real, that they lived among us and would gut you in your sleep so you better get them before they could get you. It was a powerful delusion, one he’d passed on to his oldest son, who had begun to assist him in his murders when he was still a child himself. They’d been trained, extensively; raised like soldiers in their father’s own personal army. They’d been beaten, neglected, and in Dean’s case almost certainly sexually assaulted, through probably not by John Winchester himself. Most underage, street-based sex workers did not leave that life without some scars, whether physical or mental, to show for it. Sam on the other hand, had been the protected child, the most important thing in his brother’s life, the only thing he was willing to risk defying his father for. That Sam didn’t buy into their father’s delusions, that he had his own obsessions, had been the thing to drive him away from his father and brother, send him running off to California for four whole years of pretending to be a normal person, before he murdered his girlfriend and lured his brother out from under their father’s control and into Sam’s. There had been some speculation in their files from various agents and psychologists that the brother’s relationship was incestuous, but Spencer didn’t think that was the case. Nothing that he’d seen would indicate that anyways, though he hadn’t yet had the chance to observe much of their interactions. What he’d seen so far did confirm how dependent each brother was on each other, how obsessed they were with the other. While Spencer did still think that the BAU’s analysis, done all those years ago, that concluded that Sam was the dominant of the pair, that he used the delusions their father had raised them with to control his brother and excuse his own sadistic, murderous impulses, was accurate, what he’d observed of them so far did seem to indicate that the relationship was, to some extent, more reciprocal than they had previously hypothesized. Sam might be the dominant of the pair, might make far more of the decisions, especially when it counted, but he was willing to let his brother guide their behaviour at least some of the time. Even if it was only because of what he believed Dean was able to do for him, because of the utility he saw in his brother, it was still a factor that Spencer would need to take into account, something that would still shape some elements of Sam’s behaviours and decisions. 

Regardless, together, as adults, the pair had managed to cut a bloody swath across the country before their supposed deaths. As itinerant in adulthood as they had been in their youth, the pair didn’t seem to have any home base that any law enforcement agency had ever been able to identify, didn’t even seem to have a preference for any particular part of the country. While a lot of the cases linked to them were more speculation than anything, if even half of them were correct then the brothers travelled without direction or pattern. The only consistency, and truly the only consistency, was that they were always together, and that they always left a town more bloody than when they had arrived. Victimology, weapon, whether or not they tortured their victims, bound them, raped them… all of that was as unpredictable as their movements, and made it almost impossible to say for certain that any crime could be accurately ascribed to them unless there was a witness willing to testify that the brothers had been involved. 

And that was probably the strangest aspect of their case, even with all of the other inconsistencies piling up and already making them one of the oddest pairs of serial killers in recorded history: it was almost impossible to find witnesses who would testify against the Winchesters. Even some of their supposed victims would clam up and refuse to say a bad word against them, would lie on the record about what the Winchesters had done to them or their loved ones. Which, while it did lend credence to the theory that Dean, like his father before him, was a genuine vigilante – killing murderers, abusers, rapists – it was still so strange as to be almost impossible to believe that _no one_ was willing to give a testimony against the brothers. If Spencer hadn’t reviewed all the transcripts, watched all the footage himself, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t still be trying to theorize other explanations for why all the witnesses in the Winchester case seemed to dry up and drift away, retracting their statements and refusing to talk any further. If the Winchesters weren’t so nomadic, didn’t leave town the second they were done terrorizing the population, he would have bet that they were threatening people, watching them to make sure they didn’t talk. As it was… as it was, Spencer truly didn’t know what to think of that, other than to vaguely posit that perhaps both men were just so charming, so charismatic, that even their victims couldn’t fully believe ill of them. He could buy that, to some extent. Dean had always been charming, a smug smile crawling across his face in interrogation videos and mugshots alike, whereas every photo of Sam Winchester taken after he turned 18 seemed to catch him feeling sheepish and embarrassed. The photos of him as a teen, dead-eyed and beaten bloody, always lingered in Spencer’s mind though, the sharp flash of him reciting the Bible in latin to Spencer as a child, the intelligence and calculation living behind his eyes. Sam might come across as the boy next door, but he was just as much a wolf in sheep’s clothing as his brother was. 

The sound of a car door slamming shook Spencer out of his thoughts, making him jump slightly within his bindings. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sam do the same, watched him straighten up and rub at his face in a futile attempt to maybe bring some colour back to his face, to make himself look less like he had one foot in the grave. Spencer could have told him it was a futile effort, the scrubbed red tone his cheeks had briefly taken on giving him more of a feverish look than anything else, even as it immediately began to fade, the heavy tread of boots against the wooden steps announced Dean’s approach. Spencer didn’t even bother to hope for a second it was someone else, and his resignation was proved justified when the door swung open to reveal the eldest brother, three brown paper bags cradled in the crook of his arm, a plastic grocery bag swinging from the fingers of the same arm as he kicked the door open. Spencer’s eyes widened as he took in what Dean was carrying in his other hand, the sound of him greeting his brother fading to distant white noise as he watched the light catch on the edge of the large knife Dean was now carrying. It looked old, carved with symbols that Spencer couldn’t quite make out from a distance, handle worn and stained. Well used, Spencer thought, edging on hysterical even within his own head, and he wondered if they would use it on him, add his blood to the stains that could never quite wash out. He thought back to photos of bodies bloodied and mutilated, of torture and organs being cut out, evidence of people being burned alive, ripped to shreds, used in rituals that no studier of the occult had ever properly been able to identify to the FBI. Even as his mind spiraled into nightmarish possibilities though, he continued to track Dean as he crossed the room to the kitchen, dropping the bag on the table and pulling a bottle of whisky from one of the bags. He didn’t bother with a glass, just unscrewed the top and took a long swallow, seeming to almost sigh in relief. Spencer watched, filing that fact away. His body didn’t seem to bear many of the signs of long-term alcohol misuse, but whether that was because it was a recent development or because he was still fairly young Spencer couldn’t be sure. He supposed it could be a reaction to his brother’s sickness, or even to Spencer’s own presence, but based on the casual way he and Sam had discussed his need to go pick up alcohol, he doubted it was anything less than an addiction. 

Setting down the bottle, Dean reached into the plastic bag, pulling out a bottle rattling with pills and tossing it all the way across the room. Spencer turned just in time to watch Sam catch the bottle, an impressive display of dexterity and the synchronicity that existed between the two of them, even with Sam’s compromised condition. Sam looked at the label, then nodded, picking up a half-empty bottle of water from the table and using it to wash down three of the pills. Spencer watched this, wondering what they were. Painkillers was a possibility, or something meant to treat whatever illness was eating Sam’s body from the inside out. It was clearly over the counter though, so it was unlikely that it was a true treatment, whether because it was simply a bandaid until Sam could consume real medicine or because the brothers had avoided seeking medical help for whatever was wrong with him. The second seemed more likely, not just due to who they were and the life they lead, but because from what Spencer had seen so far, if the two of them weren’t in full denial about Sam’s sickness they were at least doing their best to ignore the implications of it. Though again, it did seem that Dean, at least, was not fully aware of just how bad it was. 

“Do you want some water?” Dean’s voice from right next to him made him jump again, and Spencer cursed himself as he realized that he’d been so preoccupied with watching the younger that he’d lost track of the older. He turned his head to see Dean looking down at him with a neutral expression, a bottle of water held slightly forward towards Spencer. Spencer hesitated, looking at the bottle. He did, and the bottle did seem to be sealed, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He was quite sure that the brothers were more than capable of drugging or poisoning a bottle before resealing it. There was also the distinct possibility that drinking would hasten his need to use the bathroom, and while there was the chance that them untying him from the chair to use the bathroom would present him with an opportunity for escape, there was just as great a chance that they wouldn’t untie him at all, and he would rather stave off that possibility for as long as possible. He shook his head, watched as Dean shrugged, no obvious frustration on his face indicating a foiled attempt to harm Spencer. Though there wasn’t actually much need for trickery he supposed – it wasn’t like he could do anything to stop them from pushing a needle into his vein, or forcing a pill down his throat. 

“Suit yourself,” Dean said, then headed over to the couch where his brother had once again focused on the book he was reading. The older brother threw himself into the small armchair, kicking his still-booted feet up onto the table and ignoring the annoyed look his brother shot his way. “Find anything?” he asked, setting something down on the floor before opening the bottle and taking a drink from it himself. Sam sighed, shaking his head. 

“No,” he said. “I’ve checked everything we have with us, twice, and none of the usual sites are giving me anything. I tried calling up a couple of the professors we have on our list, but none of them were of any help either.” Spencer fought the urge to frown at the implication that the Winchesters had some sort of network of academics that they accessed regularly, and instead focused on what the brothers were saying. He didn’t know yet if it would be better to challenge or go along with their delusions, act as if he believed them as well, but it would be much more difficult to do if he continued to have as little context as he did currently for what they were doing, what they believed about the situation. 

“Ok, why don’t you walk me through it again? Maybe that’ll help shake something loose from that oversized head of yours,” Dean said, trading the water bottle for what he’d set down on the floor earlier – more whisky, Spencer realized, though this time actually poured into a glass. Sam shot Dean another look, annoyed on the surface but with an underpinning of fondness that Spencer hadn’t been expecting. Sam glanced at Spencer, then back at Dean, who just shrugged. “He already thinks we’re nuts,” he said. 

“Yeah well, I’d like to keep it that way,” Sam said, and Dean rolled his eyes. 

“So we keep him in the cabin until we’re done working the case,” Dean said. “He keeps thinking we’re psycho killers, we gank whatever we need to gank, issue solved.” 

“Until you end up back on the FBI’s most wanted,” Sam said, voice dry. 

“Until _we_ end up back on the FBI’s most wanted,” Dean corrected, eyes narrowing slightly. Sam didn’t say anything, just looked back at the book in his lap, and something like heartbreak flashed across Dean’s face. _He knows_ , Spencer realized. _He knows Sam is dying._ The expression was gone as fast as it had arrived though, and then Dean was turning towards Spencer, a cocky smile sliding back on over his face. As a mask it was very effective, Spencer thought as Dean opened his mouth to speak. 

“What do you think?” he said. “We gonna make your list again?” Spencer opened his mouth, no idea what he was going to say, when Sam spoke instead. 

“Leave him alone Dean,” he said, voice sharp with annoyance. “The less we talk to him the better.” 

“C’mon Sammy,” Dean said. “Aren’t you curious what the FBI thinks about us? Don’t you want to know what the agent here thinks we’re up to?” Sam once again glanced towards Spencer, then back to his brother. 

“I’d rather not, actually,” he said, voice dry, and Dean rolled his eyes. 

“You’re no fun,” he said, taking another drink of his whisky. “Fine then, tell me about the case.” Sam put down the book he’d been staring at with a heavy sigh, leaning back in his seat to look at the photos pinned up on the wall instead. Spencer let his eyes follow his gaze. From here he still couldn’t quite make out what they were, doubted Sam could either, but maybe he’d looked at them enough that he didn’t need to get any closer. 

“Two dead teenagers,” he said. “Both classified suicides by the local coroner because they died in their locked bedrooms, who also seems pretty comfortable ignoring the fact that both of them had their stomachs ripped open and their intestines pulled out.”

“In his defense, it did look like they had done it,” Dean said, and Sam nodded. 

“Blood up to their elbows,” he said. It was strange, listening to them talk. Spencer could believe that they hadn’t been the ones to kill the teenagers; that Dean, at least, believed there was some sort of supernatural creature involved. But the way they were talking about it was reminding him so strongly of how his team would work a case that it made him feel slightly nauseated. They had the same familiar detachment he was used to hearing out of his own mouth, even as they recounted additional bloody details – chunks of skin under nails as if the kids had pulled open their own stomachs with their bare hands, intestines carefully unwoven from their stomach, not ripped out harshly but removed with as much care as was possible while dying at the same time – but they also didn’t seem to revel in it the way he would have expected, not either of them. Even if it was someone else’s kills, he would have expected Sam in particular to have some sort of reaction to the violence and horror of the kills, whether of jealousy or excitement. Instead, both of them seemed almost professional in their detailing of the nightmarish way that the two teenagers had died. There was a long silence after they finished their recounting, before Dean spoke again. 

“You said you found evidence of it happening before though right? So it might be some sort of feeding cycle.” Sam nodded, reaching up to rub a hand over his face, exhaustion clear in his movements. A worried expression slid over Dean’s face, gone before Sam looked back at him. 

“Yeah,” he said, “only one of them made the papers, as a murder – the girl’s boyfriend ended up being convicted for it – but I was able to dig up five other obituaries around the same time. None of them mentioned cause of death, but if we assume that they were the same…” 

“Then there’s probably still more to come,” Dean finished. “God,” he said, taking another drink and then grimacing when he noticed his glass was empty. He stood up, heading over to the kitchen. “That was twenty years ago right?” he asked as he poured himself another glass. He paused, made eye contact with Spencer, and tilted the bottle towards him. Spencer didn’t know what his face did in response to the unexpected offer, but whatever it was it made Dean’s lips twist in a small, joyless smile. He set the bottle down, taking another drink as he headed back to the living room. 

“Right,” Sam confirmed as he did, picking up a page from the table that was covered in a tight, dense handwriting. “There were a couple more obituaries that I was able to dig up from forty years ago too. The library didn’t have any papers earlier than the 1950s though, so there’s no way to know if it’s been around longer than that, unless we start driving around and asking all the old people we see if they remember any fucked up suicides from when they were younger.”

“Pass,” Dean said, settling back into his chair. Spencer watched, but there didn’t seem to be any wobble in his step, no slur in his voice, though he’d certainly drank enough, in a short enough time frame, that most people of his height and weight would be well on their way to drunk at this point. Almost certainly an alcoholic then, with that level of need and tolerance. There was a moment of silence before Dean spoke again. “Were you able to figure out how far apart the deaths were last time?” he asked. 

“Yeah, um,” Sam reached forward, moving books and papers until he finally picked up a sticky note that had been stuck to the front of a book that looked like it was at least a hundred years old; heavy embossed leather and gold foil. Spencer tried not to feel offended on the book’s behalf. There were much worse things about the brothers to get upset about. “It looks like it took it about four months to get through all of them, but since we’re just going off the obits, it’s hard to say for sure if there was a distinct timeline between each kill.” 

“Think the coroner’s office would still have records of the autopsies?” Sam shrugged. 

“Probably?” he said. “You wanna break in and check?” Dean frowned in thought. 

“It might be helpful if we knew how long we have before it’s gonna kill again,” he said slowly. “But if we can’t figure out how it’s picking it’s targets, or what it is and how to find it, I don’t know how far that’ll get us.” Sam hummed, staring down at the pile of papers in front of him. Spencer stared as well, his own mind racing as he broke down the Winchesters’ conversation. If there really was another killer in town, killing every twenty years, they would have to be quite old by now. Unless… his mind flashed back to a previous case, a real case, and a man raising his son to kill just as he had. Maybe, he thought. Still, twenty years apart would imply a level of control that most people who killed in the way the brothers described just didn’t have. That amount of mutilation of the bodies, that many deaths so quickly… most killers devolved as they went along, increasing their pace and violence. There was, he supposed, the chance that the unsub was like the Winchesters, nomadic and only returning to terrorize this small town every twenty years. They also could have been in prison, his mind offered. He glanced at the brothers, wondering if he should mention any of this aloud. He dismissed the idea almost immediately. Disrupting Dean’s delusions, Sam’s control, by introducing the possibility of a human killer… he didn’t yet have a strong grasp on the power balance between them, redefined by Sam’s illness. He had no idea how they might react to that sort of challenge. It would be worth it, he thought, if he realized something that would be helpful for them to find whoever was doing this, the lives of the children suffering at the hands of the unknown killer more important than ensuring his continued wellbeing. Until then though, he would hold his tongue. He would have also considered the possibility that it was Sam doing the killing, baiting his brother and constructing a monster for him to hunt, but given his weakened state it was unlikely that he had the physical capacity for those sorts of attacks, the close control over the victim they would require. Dean also seemed reluctant to let his brother out of his sight, another barrier to Sam pursuing his own desires without his brother’s knowledge. More likely the truth, however improbable, was that the brothers had actually managed to identify another serial killer operating in this small town. Unless, of course, everything that they were saying was false, that the teens had died as the result of perfectly normal suicides, but he had to admit that based on their histories, the chances were higher that it was actually the first, incredibly unlikely, option. Focusing back on the brothers, Spencer watched as Sam picked up a laptop that had been buried under the papers, opening it and making a face as the sounds of a female voice moaning escaped the speaker before his finger shot down to hit the mute button. He shot another look at his brother, who snorted out a laugh. 

“Put a password on it if it bothers you so bad princess,” he said. 

“You could at least close the window,” Sam said, clicking a couple of times. Spencer again fought the urge to frown. The way they talked to each other was so ordinary, so lacking in any trace of the power imbalance between them. It was strange, and he had to wonder if it might be a show that they were putting on for him, though to what end he couldn’t begin to guess. To lure him into a false sense of security maybe, or just to throw off the FBI’s profile on the off-chance that Spencer made it out of this alive. 

“What are you looking for?” Dean asked. There was a long pause while Sam continued to click around, not answering. Dean didn’t seem to be too bothered though, just settled more comfortably into his chair and took another drink. Finally, Sam made a small noise of triumph. 

“There’s a retirement home in town,” he said, looking up from his laptop. Dean made a face. 

“Seriously? I thought that was a joke.” Sam shrugged. 

“In the absence of any other records…” he said. 

“Talk to old people,” his brother said on a sigh. 

“We should probably split up,” Sam said. “Cover more ground faster. One of us can hit up the coroner’s office while the other goes to the retirement home.” Dean nodded before smiling and holding out a fist. 

“For the old people?” he said. Sam rolled his eyes but matched his brother’s gesture, and Spencer watched incredulously as the two killers played rock, paper, scissors. Sam’s rock beat Dean’s scissors, and Dean swore as Sam laughed. 

“Every time Dean,” he said, standing. He swayed slightly, hands flying out as if to steady himself on the empty air. Dean rose just as quickly, expression worried, but Sam recovered quickly, straightening fully before he glanced towards Spencer. “What should we do with him?” he said, and Spencer tried his best not to let the fear that shot through his body show on his face. Dean looked at him as well before shrugging. 

“Leave him here?” he said. “It’s not like we can take him with us, and you said that you wanted to keep him out of it as much as possible.” Sam made an expression that conveyed how much he didn’t like that idea, but surprisingly didn’t argue. 

“Do you need anything before we go?” he asked instead, looking at Spencer. “We’ll probably be gone for a couple hours so if you need water, or to use the bathroom…” he trailed off, and Spencer quickly considered his options. He was tied securely enough that it would be a struggle to free himself, even with the freedom offered by being alone. If the offer to untie him to use the bathroom was genuine, there was the chance that they would tie him less well afterwards, and if not… well, it’s not like he could get _more_ bound. 

“Bathroom,” he finally said. “Please.” Sam nodded, but Dean walked past him before he got the chance to move, bending to begin untying Spencer. 

“Go load up the car,” he said. “I’ve got this.” Sam hesitated for a second but followed his brother’s directions, heading outside. Spencer heard the sound of a car door opening, then another as Dean’s hands brushed over his wrists, and realized that they must be planning on using his car as a second vehicle. _So glad I could help_ , he thought dryly to himself as the ropes finally loosen from around him. 

“Okay,” Dean said, stepping away from Spencer and back into his line of vision. He wasn’t surprised to see that Dean’s gun had made a reappearance, steadily pointed towards Spencer. “Bathroom’s all yours.” Cautiously, Spencer stood, making sure to move slowly and carefully, Dean’s eyes fixed on him as he took a couple unsteady steps of his own, legs sore with inertia as he headed towards the small room at the back of the cabin. Dean walked in behind him, grabbing two shaving bags off the counter before stepping back. “I’m trusting you with some privacy dude,” he said. “Don’t make me regret it.” Spencer shook his head, throat dry, but Dean didn’t wait for him to respond, just swung the door most of the way shut, though he kept it open enough that Spencer wouldn’t be able to get it shut and locked before Dean had time to stop him. Spencer glanced around quickly, but there wasn’t anything in the room that he could use against the brothers or to stash on himself for later use, at least not anything that Dean wouldn’t immediately spot on him, so he just used the toilet. As soon as he began to run the tap to wash his hands Dean swung the door back open. Sam stepped into the cabin just as Spencer did, and they looked at each other. 

“We should cuff him,” Sam said. “The chair’s too risky if we’re leaving him alone.” From next to him, Dean nodded. 

“To the bed?” he suggested, glancing towards the heavy four-poster bed at the back of the room. Sam nodded, heading towards the bags on the floor. Dean ushered Spencer back towards the bed, directing him to lie on his back, spread-eagled. Sam appeared quickly after, four pairs of silver cuffs, unrecognizable symbols carved into the metal, in his hands. He handed two pairs to Dean, who attached Spencer's wrists to the top posts, while his brother secured Spencer’s legs. Spencer tried not to let his breathing speed up, tried to take deep breaths through the growing panic. _It’s not like this is worse than it already was,_ he tried to tell himself. At least he was still alive, and relatively unharmed.

“Okay,” Dean said as both him and his brother stepped away from the bed, running a critical eye over Spencer, apparently reassured that there was no way that he could get himself loose. “Well… we’ll be back soon. Uh… don’t do anything while we’re gone?” Spencer stared at him as he grimaced at his own words. “Yeah,” he said, “okay, we’re gone.” He nudged his brother, and Sam followed after him, the sound of the front door locking loud in the silence that they left in their wake.

Spencer swallowed, trying not to let panic and fear overwhelm him now that he was alone for the first time since his capture. He had a couple of hours alone at least he’d estimate, though he wasn’t sure there was much, if anything, he’d be able to do with that time aside from think. He pulled at the cuffs, but wasn’t surprised to find that they didn’t budge. There was barely any give between them and the posts to begin with, no way for him to bring his hands together, or to his mouth. He wondered what would happen to him if the Winchesters never came back, then immediately attempted to push that thought out of his head. There was no point in thinking like that, in worrying about things that he couldn’t control or change. What he could do, what he should do, was figure out what his next move would be when the Winchesters got back. His best bet, unless a chance to actually escape presented itself, was probably to try and drive some sort of wedge between the brothers. 

It would be difficult, if not impossible, but it was all he had.


	2. Chapter 2

The sound of gravel under tires was what brought Spencer out of the reverie he had fallen into. He’d run through all of his options, all of the possibilities, over and over again, but every time was led to the same inescapable conclusion: that he only had two real options moving forward. Either he just kept his mouth shut, not speaking unless spoken to, and waited to see if the Winchesters might just decide to let him go, as they had alluded to. He was, however, very aware that that was likely a false hope, that they were probably only saying that to toy with him. After all, what reason would they have to let Spencer live? He was, as of right now, the only law enforcement agent in the world who knew the brothers were alive – if they let him go, it would put a target back on them that they had happily been operating without for five years now. And even with that aside… that aside, the fact remained that they were hunting a human that they considered a monster, that they were planning to kill again, and soon, if they hadn’t already. Which brought him to his second option: confront them, provoke them, analyze them, divide them… do whatever he could do to prevent that final, terrible conclusion.

It wasn’t, he thought as he listened to a car door slam, really a choice at all. 

Spencer swallowed as Dean swung the door open a few seconds later, his eyes immediately going to where Spencer was still chained down. By the look of relief that washed over the brother’s face, he had been at least a bit worried that he’d return to find Spencer gone, which was strange. The Winchesters certainly had other, bloodier options to ensure Spencer would stay put – breaking his legs came to mind – but they chose to chain him, and risk that he would figure out a way out of the bindings. He watched as Dean dropped his jacket on the chair next to the door, then headed into the kitchen. He reemerged holding a bottle of water, his eyes sliding to Spencer and then away again, a quick, nervous gesture. Guilt, maybe. Spencer tried to remember if there was any violence against law enforcement in the Winchesters’ past but drew a blank, with the notable exception of the massacre that took out Agent Henrickson. Spencer revisited his earlier conclusion that Dean viewed him solely as a threat. If the profile was correct and Dean saw himself as a hero, saw himself as fighting evil, he might view them as being on the same side. Might feel bad for holding Spencer prisoner for his brother to play with. He watched as Dean seemed to come to some decision, grabbing the chair Spencer had previously been tied to and dragging it over to the bed. Dean set the chair down and settled into it, taking another drink of water before tipping it towards Spencer. 

“Water?” he offered. Spencer hesitated for a second before nodding his head. Dean nodded, stood, and helped Spencer hold his head up to take a drink. It was surprisingly careful, Dean’s hand gentle on the back of Spencer’s head, though some water still inevitably spilled, sliding down Spencer’s cheek to the bedding beneath him. Spencer laid his head back down and thought back to earlier, how careful Dean had been when tying, and untying, him.

“Thank you,” he said as Dean stepped back, settling back into the chair. The other man shrugged, taking another drink and looking away, visibly uncomfortable with Spencer thanking him. _Guilt_ , Spencer thought again. They sat in silence for a long minute, and Spencer wondered if Dean intended for Spencer to break it, or if there was something he wanted to say to him, some reason that he had come to sit next to him rather than wait on the couch for his brother to return. Finally, Dean cleared his throat.

“So, Sammy said you’re the same dude that we met as kids at that ranch,” he said, still not looking at Spencer. 

“Yes,” Spencer said. “I am.” He waited, hoping Dean would take the initiative to continue to guide the conversation. Dean glanced at him, then the door, then back to him. 

“Did you… you were there to, what, see if we were getting touched in the bad place?” Spencer shook his head. 

“Weapons investigation,” he said. “There were concerning reports about children having unrestricted and unsupervised access to firearms.” 

“Huh,” Dean said, looking into the middle distance. “Ok, fair enough I guess.” He looked back at Spencer. “That must have been a weird day for you.” 

“It was… a bit odd,” Spencer admitted, making Dean snort and look towards the ceiling. 

“Odd,” he repeated. “Yeah, that’s a word for it.” There was a long moment of silence before he turned back to Spencer. He looked at him, a considering expression on his face, before he finally spoke again. “What did you think?” he asked. “Back then? Of me and Sam and… John.” Dean stumbled when he got to his father’s name, and Spencer mentally closed the file on that decade old question mark. After so long without any recorded activity it had been all but guaranteed that John Winchester was dead, but it was different to have it verbally confirmed by one of his sons. Spencer looked at Dean and wondered if it had been one of Sam and Dean who had done the deed, if Sam had finally killed his father to make his brother completely reliant upon him, or if he’d maybe forced Dean to do it, to break his brother just that little bit more. 

“I thought you were far too old for your age,” Spencer said instead of acknowledging any of that. He cast his mind back to the serious children he’d met so long ago, back when they still held the possibility of salvation – or at least, when Dean maybe could have been saved. If he’d done something, anything different. If he’d figured out how to– but there was no point in thinking about it like that. It had probably already been too late for Sam anyways, not that that offered much comfort to the memories of his serious little face staring up at Spencer as he asked him if he believed in God. “It was obvious that you’d seen a lot, been through a lot, even then,” Spencer finished. Dean made a small noise in the back of his throat, glancing towards the door. 

“Did you think we’d… what did you think of our dad?” Spencer briefly wondered how that first question was going to end. Did he think they’d end up the way they did? Did he think they’d grow up to become monsters in their own right? 

“He was very convinced in the righteousness of his actions,” Spencer said carefully, painfully aware that this was treacherous ground he was venturing out onto. “He had his mission, and that was the only thing that mattered to him.” Dean laughed, a short, bitter sound. 

“Wow, you got all that from the what, ten words he said to you?” 

“He spent much longer with my colleague,” Spencer reminded him, and Dean’s face immediately sobered. 

“How did she… how was she after?” Spencer shrugged. 

“She’d been through much worse,” he said, honest. “Barely had any scarring though, the stitches you gave her were excellent.” The smile that twisted Dean’s face landed somewhere between bitter and pleased. 

“Yeah well, practice makes perfect, et cetera,” he said. He hesitated, then asked his next question: “What did you think of Sammy?” Spencer thought for a second, choosing his words with care, the use of the nickname not lost on him. It might not have been intentional, but it was a warning nonetheless – this was Dean’s little brother that Spencer was about to take about.

“Your brother was an exceptionally serious child,” he finally said. “I was surprised by the types of questions he asked, the things that he was worried about.” Dean gave him a curious look, and Spencer expanded. “He had a lot of things to say about God, about salvation, the nature of evil.” He was surprised when Dean smiled in response to his words, a small, fond thing full of remembering. “He talked about you too, how you would take care of him, take care of everybody.” The smile dropped from Dean’s face, and Spencer watched as he sighed, ran his hand over his face. 

“Not everybody,” he said, so quiet Spencer was certain he wasn’t meant to hear it. He looked back at Spencer, a strange small smile returning to his face. 

“It’s weird,” he said. “We moved around so much, not many people knew us as kids. Not anyone who’s alive anyways.” The grief on his face was old, but no less sharp, and Spencer wondered what kind of people John would have been spending enough time around for his sons to develop bonds with, who they had lost that Dean had cared enough about to mourn. 

“I don’t know that I’d say I knew you,” Spencer said, and Dean shrugged. 

“Close enough,” he said. “It’s not like I’m tracking down any of the teachers who told me I’d be better off dropping out of school, or who called the cops on dad. Besides, you probably learned more about us, what our lives were really like, in that one day than any other civilian we were ever around.” _Civilian_ , Spencer thought, mind casting back to an older man – the shadow of whom he could see in Dean’s face more clearly now that he himself had grown older – using the exact same word. _Still his father’s son,_ Spencer thought. _Sam’s tried so hard to mold Dean into something that belongs to him, to stake his claim on Dean and erase his father’s, but he’s still so much his father’s son._

“What your lives were really like?” Spencer asked. Dean shrugged. 

“It’s not like I was telling my middle school teachers that I was getting up to run five miles before school every day, that I was spending my weekends walking through forests with my dad learning how to– to hunt.” Spencer swallowed against the knowledge of what, exactly, it was that Dean had been learning to hunt. “The things you saw,” Dean continued, “the things you thought of us – think of us – they’re not accurate, but they’re closer to the truth than anything that anyone else got. You know, knew, about the guns, the training, the… beliefs, behind it all. That’s a lot more than most people got, still get, I guess. I mean, you thought my dad was a monster then, think me and Sam are monsters now, but still, I don’t know,” Dean shrugged. “It was sitting just next to the truth, I guess. A step or two off, a truth you shouldn’t ever have to know.” Spencer started in surprise. 

“You don’t want to convince me?” he asked.

“What, that me and Sam aren’t killers?” he thought for a long moment. “No,” he finally said. “It’s safer for you not to, and besides, I don’t think there’s anything I could _say_ to convince you otherwise. The truth is in seeing, and you can’t ever come back from that, not all the way. There’s no returning to normal, no matter how hard you might try.” 

“You never tried,” Spencer said, and Dean let out a small, ugly laugh. 

“Yeah, that was never going to be in the cards for me,” he said. “Sam sure, but not me.” 

“Too much your father’s son?” Spencer asked, and Dean shot him a sharp look. 

“Something like that,” he said at last. “Besides, Sam and me are killers. Maybe not in the way you think, but in all the ways that matter… I already know where I’m headed when I die,” he said, his words strangely empty of bitterness, of anger, of anything other than an empty, hollow resignation. 

“Where are you going?” Spencer asked. Dean sat in silence for a long minute, long enough that Spencer was beginning to worry he’d asked the wrong question. 

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen agent?” he finally asked, looking over at Spencer. Spencer held his gaze as memories flashed through his mind. A lifetime of horror and blood, so much to choose from, an impossibility of choices. He didn’t speak for long enough that the corner of Dean’s mouth quirked up slightly, like he was smiling at some private joke. 

“I don’t know if I can think of any one thing,” Spencer finally said. “But kids… kids are always the worst.” Dean nodded, face serious, and Spencer realized what his earlier smile had been for. _He does see parallels between us,_ he thought. The difference, of course, being that Dean brought his monster with him, through town after town, over year after year, while Spencer saw his either dead or buried. 

“What’s the worst pain you’ve ever been in?” he asked, and Spencer fought the urge to frown. He didn’t understand this line of questioning, but continuing to answer might make Dean more sympathetic to him, might cause him to continue to draw those parallels, tighter and tighter. 

“I was tortured once,” he said. “A man kidnapped and beat me.” Dean’s face twisted in an unexpectedly sympathetic expression before he looked away. 

“There’s so much blood in my life, so much worse than you can even begin to imagine. The things I’ve seen, that I’ve done, that have been done to me…” he trailed off, looking down at his hands, twisting them together. Reid followed the motion, noting the scars across his knuckles, the beginnings of larger wounds just peering out from the cuffs of his shirts. He could only imagine, though he’d rather not, exactly what the other man meant by that. He wondered how much of the damage that had been done to him over his lifetime had been caused by his father, his brother. Himself. “I’m going to hell when I die,” he said. “And that’s fine, it’s the least I deserve. Bit of a homecoming really,” he said, laughing without emotion. “Never should have left in the first place.” 

“Left?” Spencer asked, mind racing. Was Dean implying he’d been to hell? Did he view himself as evil, as some sort of demon? If he believed in his vigilante mission as completely as he otherwise seemed to, why would he view himself as evil? Why would he align himself sympathetically with Reid? Dean glanced at him, a wry smile on his face. 

“Don’t worry agent, I’m not going to bother you with stories you won’t believe anyways. Let’s just say that whatever sickos you’ve dealt with? They’ve gotten what they’ve got coming to them, and then some.” Dean looked into the distance, his fingers twisting as if trying to hold something invisible, something small and cutting… Spencer watched him for a moment. He could keep this conversation going, Dean skirting around any actual details, or he could take a risk, shove his hand right into the festering wound at the centre of Dean’s being. 

“What about your brother?” he asked. Dean’s gaze snapped to him, his expression already turning stormy. _No going back now,_ Reid thought, and continued. “Where’s Sam going when he dies?” Dean licked his lips, looking away. 

“Sam’s going to heaven,” he said. “Or I’m hunting down God myself and forcing him to let him in.” Spencer blinked, surprised. He knew Dean was intensely protective of his brother, would excuse all of his behaviours, all of his violence, but to the point where he saw himself as going to hell and his brother going to heaven?

“Why would you go to hell and Sam to heaven?” he asked. Dean shrugged. 

“Sam’s earned it, more than earned it. The things he’s been through, the things he’s done for this world… he deserves to get to rest, when it’s all over. To be at peace.” 

“But you don’t?” Spencer prodded. Dean shook his head, running his hand over his face. 

“What’re you getting at agent?” Dean asked, and Spencer decided to throw caution into the wind. 

“You know he’s dying, right?” he asked. He didn’t know what he was expecting Dean to do – though pulling his gun and putting a bullet in Spencer was definitely a possibility – but Dean laughing, harsh and broken though it was, wasn’t something he saw coming. 

“He better not be,” he said. “He swore he wouldn’t, he said he was strong enough to–” Dean cut himself off, fell silent. 

“Whatever’s wrong with your brother, being strong enough to overcome it isn’t something he can control,” Spencer said. “It’s not something either of you can control.” Dean shook his head. 

“Guess not,” he said. He glanced at Spencer. “So we’ll just do what we always do – fight to the end and if we go down, go down with our guns in our hands.” Spencer didn’t say what he was thinking – that it was far more likely that Sam’s end would be heralded by the steady beep of a heart rate monitor and the smell of disinfectant. 

“And if Sam dies and you don’t?” Spencer asked. Dean shook his head.

“It won’t happen like that,” he said. 

“He’s very sick,” Spencer said, pushing his luck, “he’s not–”

“Then I follow after him,” Dean finally said, voice harsh as he turned to glare at Spencer. Spencer fought not to visibly react to the anger in Dean’s voice, the way his body had tensed up with the threat of imminent violence. Dean stool up, the abrupt motion finally making Spencer twitch away from him. “Sam was right,” Dean said. “We shouldn’t be talking to you.” 

He walked away, once again leaving Spencer alone. 

In the end, it was probably for the best that their conversation came to such an abrupt end when it did – Dean had been sitting on the couch for only a handful of minutes, steadily putting away yet another glass of whisky when the sound of Spencer’s rental car broke the silence. Spencer didn’t particularly want to find out what Sam Winchester might do if he thought Spencer and Dean were bonding in some way, if he decided that Spencer was a threat to his relationship with his brother. Instead, when Sam walks through the door, it was to the sight of Spencer still bound to the bed, and his brother alone on the couch. His eyes went to Spencer, then Dean as he slowly shut the door behind him. 

“How did it go?” he asked his brother. Dean shrugged. 

“Got my ass pinched by a woman who was probably at least a thousand years old, found out that there was a series of weird suicides eighty years ago,” Dean said. Sam nodded as he came over to sit on the armchair Dean had occupied previously. His eyes travelled to the chair next to Spencer’s bed, but he didn’t comment on it. 

“So it’s a twenty year cycle,” he said, “and it’s been here a long time.” 

“Seems like it,” Dean said. “How about you, how was the coroner’s office?” 

“The reports didn’t have anything new, but the office was closed, so I went down to the morgue and performed my own autopsy on the newest victim.” Spencer blanched, happy that neither of the brothers were looking at him. The thought of Sam alone in a morgue with the body of a teenager, cutting them open and performing a nightmarish mimicry of an autopsy… Spencer didn’t want to know anything beyond that. 

“Yeah?” Dean asked, as if having his brother tell him he’d been cutting open dead bodies was a daily occurance. Which probably wasn’t far from the truth. “Did you find anything?” 

“Nothing seemed out of place but there was… I don’t know how to describe it, almost a hollow in the centre of her chest? No organs were missing but it looked like something had been there but wasn’t anymore.” Spencer couldn’t see what Dean’s face did in response to Sam’s description, but whatever it was made Sam snort out a laugh. “Yeah, I don’t know either. I’m guessing something is using them as incubators.”

“So it might not actually be a single monster,” Dean added. “It might be a nest of something with a life cycle of around twenty years.” Sam thought for a long moment. 

“That would make sense,” he said. “Maybe not all of the… babies are viable then? Otherwise we’d be seeing a lot more deaths.” 

“Could just be killing each other off too,” Dean suggested, and Sam sighed, running his hand over his face in a gesture eerily reminiscent of his brother. 

“Fuck,” he said with feeling. “We’re totally flying blind here dude. I think we need to call Cas.” Dean sighed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I just don’t like bothering him right now, with all the…” he glanced at Spencer, as if only just remembering that there was someone else there, someone listening in on his and his brother’s conversation. “Stuff, going on,” he finished awkwardly. Sam’s eyes cut to Spencer as well, then back to his brother. 

“Kids are dying,” he said, and Dean groaned. 

“Yeah, I know. Fine. I’ll call him.” Dean stands up and heads out the front door, apparently wanting to be out of Spencer’s hearing range for his call with Cas, whoever that was. Spencer frowned. The brothers had made reference already to having people in their lives, people they relied on for information. It was strange, didn’t match their antisocial behaviour and codependence which had previously proved so deadly to anyone that got near them. Still, he supposed that with the life they led, the weapons and other supplies they needed to procure on a regular basis, that they might tap into certain networks of people. John, after all, had proved himself willing to join cults, survivalist groups, and who knew what else. There was a chance the brothers were just following the example set by their father, maybe even using some of the same contacts and sources. Cas was an unusual name, who knew what sort of group he might belong to, what beliefs he might hold that would justify helping the Winchesters to himself. Sam glanced again at Spencer, before disappearing into the kitchen area, and Spencer let himself relax back onto the bed, releasing his neck from the odd angle needed to hold his head up just enough to observe the room. The muffled sounds of Dean’s phone call were just barely audible from inside the cabin, fading in and out of hearing as Sam rifled through the cupboards, making noises of his own. It wasn’t long before Dean returned however, looking over at his brother. 

“He’ll be by in a couple of hours,” he said. “He has some… things, he needs to take care of first.”

“Anything we need to worry about?” Sam asked, and Dean shook his head. 

“He said he has it under control,” he said. He glanced towards Spencer. “I told him to use the front door.” Spencer frowned up at the ceiling, wondering what that could possibly mean. He heard Sam sigh. 

“We should put him back in the chair,” he said. “At least for a little bit. It can’t be comfortable, tied like that.”

“Yeah because tied to a chair is the height of luxury,” Dean said dryly before sighing in resignation. 

“Yeah, ok,” he said, and both brothers walked back to the bed, Dean pulling out his gun as he reached the bed. Despite the conversation he’d just listened to, Spencer couldn’t help but lean away from the other man, from the threat he posed now more than ever. Dean’s expression was mostly resigned as he spoke. “Sam’s going to uncuff you,” he said, “and you’re not going to try a single thing.” Spencer nodded, agreeing easily. Anything he tried right now would almost certainly end very, very poorly anyways, especially with how stiff his muscles were from lying, chained, in the same position for hours. The brothers guided him back to the front of the cabin, Sam dragging the chair behind him, and he found himself once again being bound to the wooden piece of furniture. It certainly wasn’t comfortable, but Sam had been right – it helped, to change position, to release the tension held in his limbs from being stretched out the way he had been. Dean looked at Sam once he was secured. Sam was looking pale again, and Dean frowned. “You need to eat,” he said. “Do we have anything?” Sam shook his head. 

“I just double checked but not enough for all three of us. I was going to stop on the way back but I… forgot,” he said. Spencer wasn’t surprised at the revelation that they were planning on feeding him – they’d been careful to keep him hydrated, keep him whole and unharmed so far, so it made sense to feed him as well. He couldn’t stop himself from worrying, however, that the care that they were showing him now was because they had something far worse planned for him later. He tried not to linger on that thought though, instead focusing on the harsh breath of air Dean blew out. 

“Fuck, ok,” Dean said. 

“I can go,” Sam offered. Dean eyed him up. 

“Yeah I don’t think so,” he said. “Why don’t you stay here, keep our guest entertained.” Spencer swallowed, even as Sam shook his head in annoyance. 

“I’m _fine_ Dean,” he said. Dean glanced at Spencer. 

“This isn’t a discussion,” he said. Sam opened his mouth to argue before glancing at Spencer as well. 

“Fine,” he finally said. “Please get at least something green.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get your rabbit food. Bitch.” 

“Jerk,” Sam replied with a smile, and him and Spencer watched as the older man once again disappeared into the outside world. Spencer wasn’t thrilled to be left alone with the younger brother again, though the last time he’d been alone with him had been fairly uneventful. He could only hope this time would be the same. Who knows, with Sam coughing up blood, maybe he was just too weak to torture and kill on his own, maybe he needed his brother there. _Not actually comforting,_ Spencer thought to himself, watching as Sam sat back down on the couch. Without his research to distract him this time though, his eyes quickly fell to Spencer, making him swallow in nerves. Sam sighed. 

“I know there’s nothing I can say to make you actually believe this,” he said. “But you’re safe here. We’re not going to hurt you.” 

“Of course not,” Spencer said, and Sam snorted. 

“Yeah,” he said, “don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. I wouldn’t believe me either.” 

“I do believe you,” Spencer said, and Sam looked at him for a long moment. 

“You’re more scared of me than of Dean,” he said, “why?” Spencer sat in surprised silence for a long moment. His ability to hide his emotions, his real thoughts, had been forged and honed through years on the job, years of having to look killers in the eyes, telling them exactly what they wanted to hear, and making them _believe_ him. The idea that Sam Winchester was somehow able to see through that was terrifying to contemplate. Though, Spencer thought, pulling himself back from that ledge, it was far more likely that he was just guessing, poking at his captive to see what he’d do. So Spencer did what he’d spend decades practicing: he lied. 

“I’m not,” he denied. “I know what the case files say about what the both of you have done but watching you… you really are trying to save people, aren’t you?” Sam looked at him, considering. 

“You think I’m the one in control,” he finally said, “that I’m controlling Dean, making him do what I want. Why?” Spencer opened his mouth, ready to lie again, but quickly changed his mind. Sam had clearly made up his mind, and whether he was guessing or able to see through Spencer, it wouldn’t help him any to antagonize him by continuing to lie to him, to disagree with him. 

“In most pairs of killers,” he said, “there’s a dominant and submissive personality. It’s the only way that two killing urges can coexist without wiping each other out.” 

“So when you did your analysis of us, you decided I was the dominant? Wouldn’t it more likely be Dean? He’s older,” he said. Spencer shook his head. 

“You’re larger, stronger, smarter, you–”

“I’m not smarter than him,” Sam interrupted, his expression angry. Spencer opened his mouth, ready to immediately walk back his words but Sam was still speaking. “People think that, they underestimate him because he what, he dresses like a trucker and dropped out of high school and is poor, and that I must be smarter because I went to Stanford? University isn’t everything, people can be plenty smart without that.” 

“I know,” Spencer said desperately because Sam seemed to be getting more angry the longer he spoke. He wasn’t done though, kept speaking. 

“He’s probably better read than anyone I went to school with, he speaks three languages and can read four more, he knows more about hunting than anyo–” Sam finally cut himself off, shaking his head. He breathed deeply once, twice, then gave Spencer a wry smile. “Sorry,” he said. “Sensitive subject. But my brother is not stupid, and he’s definitly not submissive.” He made a face as if only just realizing what he had just said. Spencer looked at him, wondering what the odds were that Sam would kill him if he directly asked– “I’m not submissive either,” Sam said, as if he could hear what Spencer was thinking, making the same face afterwards, clearly unable to say the word without thinking of the sexual connotations. “We’re not… it doesn’t work like that. We’re just brothers.” Spencer’s mind was racing. Sam could be lying, probably was lying, but if he wasn’t… what were the chances that two dominant serial killers could operate together for _decades_ without killing each other? Were their familial bonds just that strong, that well forged through their childhood of having only each other, of each relying on his brother alone for his survival, that they could work together without clashing? Or maybe that was the answer in itself, that they had developed their desires alongside each other, in concert, so that it had never been a competition between them, just two separate killing urges, running in parallel, their victims, their methodologies, just different enough to prevent them from coming into conflict with each other? 

“You asked me once,” Spencer said slowly, “if I’d ever seen a monster.” Sam looked at him in surprise. 

“You have a good memory agent,” he said. 

“So do you,” Spencer pointed out. “You’re the one who recognized me in the diner.” Sam shrugged, then fell silent, and Spencer wondered if he just wasn’t going to answer his question. 

“You want to know if I still believe in monsters,” Sam said, “you want to know if I’m the same type of crazy that you think Dean is, that you thought my dad was.” 

“You told me I was asking the wrong questions, back then,” Spencer said. “I’m just trying to find the right ones.” Sam snorted a laugh, leaning back on the couch. 

“I was a kid,” he said. “I didn’t know… Dad and Dean, they hadn’t told me yet. I couldn’t figure out if it was a secret that was being kept just from me, or from everyone. If it was an adult secret, or a secret that belonged to just my family.” 

“Did you figure it out?” Spencer said, Sam looked at him. 

“You helped,” he said. “I asked Dean about it, after the ranch, and he told me everything.” Spencer swallowed, imagining what _everything_ might cover in that context, what bloody lessons Sam might have begun to be taught after that revelation, still a child when he was ushered into the nightmare world his father had constructed in his own mind. 

“So you believe in monsters now?” Spencer asked. Sam blew out a noisy breath. 

“I do,” he said. He glanced at Spencer. “I know you might find this hard to believe agent, but my brother is a good man. He saves people.” _He saves some people_ , Spencer corrected in his head.

“And you?” he said aloud. Sam snorted. 

“I’ve tried,” he said. “My whole life, it feels like, but there’s always been evil in my blood, making me unclean.” He glanced down at his wrists, as if he could see through them, watch the blood flowing beneath his skin. “It’s burning now though,” he said, quietly, “Soon it’ll all be gone. Adjutorium nostrum ut omnis sint immundi spiritus omnis satanica potentiae inferni omnibus armatis malignos legionibus conventus sectae.” 

“Is that what’s making you sick?” Spencer asked. Sam glanced at him. 

“You didn’t tell Dean did you?” he asked. “About the blood?” Spencer shook his head, no. Sam nodded. “Thanks,” he said, voice oddly sincere. It was interesting, Spencer thought, for all Dean’s talk about how he was bound for hell and Sam for heaven, that his brother clearly felt like the opposite was true, that Dean was the righteous one, the good one, and he himself was evil. He suspected that if he asked Sam where he thought him and his brother would go after death he would have the opposite reply from his brother. 

“Whatever it is,” Spencer said, “it’s killing you.” Sam shrugged. 

“Maybe,” he said. “I didn’t… when I started this, it wasn’t like I wanted to die. But it’s worth it, if that’s what happens, if that’s the price I pay. At least I’ll die cleansed of my evil.” His mouth twisted up in a parody of a smile. “Maybe I’ll get to be with Dean after all.” Spencer blinked, mentally erasing his previous thought. Whatever illness was ravaging Sam, he clearly felt it was somehow undoing all of the horrible things that he had done, was making him worthy of the same goodness that he saw in his brother. It sounded like it was something Sam had done to himself too. Spencer didn’t understand how that was possible, unless Sam was maybe poisoning himself? Though if he was doing that, wouldn’t Dean stop him? Unless Dean thought that Sam was simply ill, didn’t realize that his brother was doing it intentionally, was tearing his body apart from the inside out in order to make himself worthy of the same salvation he saw for his brother. He wondered what could have caused the change, what might have set Sam on this path towards false salvation. Did he regret the bloody path he’d cut through the world? That would be incredibly at odds with the psychopath label that they had assigned him, but Spencer was already questioning the accuracy of any of their profiling of the two brothers. Either their worldview was so warped that they didn’t understand what they were actually doing, or there were motives and desires buried in their chests that Spencer hadn’t yet managed to uncover. The mission-oriented vigilantism seemed to be the only thing that was holding true, and he decided to make that as the cornerstone of his interactions with the brothers going forward, to erase the previous profile entirely and start again from that single foundation. 

“You don’t want Dean to know though,” Spencer said, “you asked me to lie to him.” Sam shrugged. 

“He’ll try to stop me, or try to do something stupid. He can’t know, not until it’s done, and then either I’ll be free or he will be.” 

“Free of you,” Spencer clarified. Sam shrugged again. 

“I’ve been the weight on his ankle his whole life,” Sam said. “I’m the reason Mom burned, the reason Dad died, the reason he burned, the one that the devil decided to crawl inside. He’s done so much, hurt himself so much, just to keep me breathing.” 

“I don’t know much about you and your brother,” Spencer admitted. “But I don’t think Dean sees it like that. I don’t think he thinks you’re a burden.” Sam snorted. 

“Just because he doesn’t think it doesn’t mean it’s not true,” he said. “Ever since I was born, Dad told him, _take care of Sammy_ , and that’s all he’s been doing ever since. Carried me out of the fire that night, dragged me out of the building while Jess burned, dragged me out of the pit when Jake severed my spine.” Spencer fought not to frown, no idea what that could mean since Sam clearly didn’t have a spinal injury. The depths of self-loathing that Sam was revealing were startling, however. Even dismissing the entirety of their original profile, every aspect of psychopathy that Sam hadn’t shown even a glimmer of, acting as a vigilante required a certain confidence in the self that Sam didn’t seem to have. After all, it was hard to convince yourself that you were doing the right thing, killing for the right reasons, if you didn’t think that you yourself were righteous. Sam didn’t seem to believe that at all though, seemed to believe the exact opposite. Spencer watched as Sam rubbed his hands over his face, no idea how to approach this version of the killer he thought he’d known everything about. _Starting over again,_ he reminded himself. _What do I know?_

He knew that Sam wasn’t a psychopath, that he cared about his brother, cared about other people when they were hurt or dying. He knew that Sam, like his brother, believed in invisible evils, that they were the only ones capable of fighting, were the only ones who knew about them even. In someone else he would have labelled that as delusions of grandeur, of being special and different, but in the loathing for himself that Sam carried, seemed to live almost the opposite belief. They might have access to secret knowledge, but both brothers carried a heavy burden of self-hatred, of their own damnation, balanced only by the conviction with which they carried their brother’s salvation. Spencer thought about all of the horrible things that had happened to both men, the nightmare of their childhood, the scars they had entered into adulthood already bearing, the additional marks the world had left on them over the years. He didn’t know how to reconcile it all, how to draw it together into a single profile that would explain what the brothers did, why they did it, why their crimes seemed so at odds with how they interacted with Spencer, with each other, the way they talked about the people they considered civilians. Sam sighed, standing and dragging Spencer out of his thoughts. 

“I’m going to change,” he said. “I smell like an autopsy room.” He gave Spencer an apologetic look, and Spencer was abruptly reminded of what Sam had been doing earlier, his hands deep inside the dead body of a girl, a particularly gruesome violation. He watched as the other man walked towards the back of the room, wondered how shattered a version of reality would have to exist in your own head to justify that sort of thing to yourself after _decades_ of doing it. He believed that Sam thought of himself as a professional, that he approached it with an almost clinical precision, though without any medical training he doubted the efficacy of Sam’s work. Spencer watched as Sam, back turned to Spencer, tugged off his shirt. His eyes widened in surprise as he took in the expanse of Sam’s back. The first thing he noticed was that the other man was painfully skinny, the weight loss even more obvious without the heavy layers to hide it. More startling though was the scarring covering his skin. He’d thought, earlier, about the scars that both men carried, knew that they both made it out of childhood already marred by physical scars to match their mental ones, had reviewed their arrest records which made note of how heavily scarred they were, but it was one thing to read it, and a very different thing to see it in person. He wasn’t sure there was an inch of Sam’s skin that was free of some sort of damage – he was too far away to label the origin of each scar with certainty but there were several gunshot wounds that he could make out, long, straight cuts that might have been from knives, what was clearly a bite mark on his shoulder, the tearing distinctive even from a distance, though what would leave a bite that large was a mystery to Spencer. The most startling was probably the massive cross burned into Sam’s shoulder. He might have guessed it was intentional, a ritual scarification, but for the way it was twisted and warped by the scars beneath it, atop it. As Sam tugged on a new shirt Spencer also caught a brief glimpse of his arms, the same silver wrapping his wrists that he remembered from photos of the younger man as a teenager. He wasn’t able to look away as Sam bent to take off his pants, mind racing. Either he’d missed an aspect of their relationship that had Sam subjecting himself to his brother’s knife – highly unlikely, given every other aspect of the dynamic between the two men – or he was living a far more dangerous life than they had ever guessed at, than Spencer could easily hypothesize an explanation for. There was no way that all of Sam’s wounds could have been caused by victims defending themselves, or by the occasional law enforcement officer getting lucky. No, the other man was facing repeated, intense physical harm, the scars covering his torso no less dense on his legs, long lines, jagged tears, what looked like a large burn on one of his calves, and more silvered circles where bullets had forced their way through skin and muscle. Spencer wondered if Dean’s body matched Sam’s, if the harm was being done to both of them. If they were, or even if they weren’t, he still didn’t understand them. Who were they encountering, on their strange, bloody travels across the country, that were doing this to them? What sort of enemies had they made, wholly separate from law enforcement, that were so determined to tear the two men apart? 

Sam was still buttoning up his second shirt when the sound of a car arriving once again announced the other brother’s return. Spencer didn’t like that he could now recognize the sound of their vehicle’s engine, though he supposed it was better to spare himself the sharp spike of false hope that someone else might have arrived at the cabin. Sure enough, it was Dean who opened the front door a few moments later, multiple paper bags, stained through with grease cradled in one arm, the other carrying a drink tray. His eyes went first to Sam and then, assured his brother was fine, to Spencer, an apologetic look sliding over his face. 

“I got burgers,” he said, walking over to the coffee table and unceremoniously shoving half the books on the table to the floor with one arm as he set down the food in the now-cleared space. “You’re not like, a vegetarian or anything right?” he looked at Spencer, who shook his head. “Allergies?” he asked, and Spencer shook his head again. Dean looked pleased as his brother walked over to join them. He glanced at Sam. “You good?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Sam said, rolling his eyes, but Dean didn’t look offended, just glanced back at Spencer. 

“We’re gonna untie you so you can eat,” he said, then pulled his gun. “And you’re not gonna try anything, right?” Spencer swallowed, and shook his head. Dean gave a small nod, and Sam walked around to untie him. Freed, Spencer stayed where he was, rubbing his wrists as Dean began to pull wrapped burgers and fries from the bags. He handed one to Spencer, who took it cautiously, abruptly aware of just how long it had been since the diner, since the last time he’d eaten anything. He watched as Dean handed his gun to Sam, who took it without any external reaction, before sitting down and grabbing a burger of his own.

“Hey!” Sam said, as if only just realizing what he’d done. 

“My burger’s getting cold Sammy,” Dean mumbled through a mouthful of food before swallowing. “Your salad can wait.” Sam looked annoyed, but still settled against the wall, gun held loosely in his hand as he looked at Spencer, though Spencer had no doubt that the other man was ready to move at a moment’s notice if Spencer even thought about trying something. Spencer looked down at the burger in his hands, and then unwrapped it and took a large bite. He tried not to eat it so fast he would be sick but it was hard, now that he was aware of how hungry he had become, now that there was food, hot and filling, set before him. Dean handed him a second burger when Spencer finished the first, and he ate that one just as quickly, Dean watching him out of the corner of his eye, looking almost impressed. “You can really pack it away for such a skinny dude,” he commented, handing Spencer one of the bags of fries and one of the drinks. Spencer consumed those far more slowly, the rush of sugars and calories finally hitting him as he finished off the last of it, watching as Dean and Sam swapped places when Dean finished his own food, Sam pulling a large salad out of the bag. Spencer had a brief, surreal moment of wondering if Sam was a vegetarian before he saw the chicken on top of the bed of greens. 

Sam ate quickly and without ceremony, and soon Spencer found himself one again bound to the chair, the two brothers clearing up the mess, complete with Sam complaining to Dean about him pushing the books off of the table. They both settled onto the couch afterwards, Sam picking up a book and Dean playing what sounded like a game on his phone, but it was only a few minutes before there was a creak from the front porch and both brothers tensed. Dean rose to his feet, silent in a way that Spencer wouldn’t have thought was possible in a building as prone to making noise as this cabin, how much the floor had creaked when they’d crossed it earlier so much more obvious now that Dean was crossing it without making any noise. His gun was already in his hand, though Spencer hadn’t even noticed him drawing it. When Spencer looked over at Sam he saw the other man was already looking back at him, and held his finger up to his lips when Spencer met his eyes. _Be quiet_ , it said, but Spencer didn’t need to be told. Whoever was outside, crying out for help would only put them in danger. He glanced towards Dean, who was moving to the wall next to the window, and when he looked back at Sam he was standing as well, holding… not a knife, more like a sword, longer than his forearm, silver and strangely round. Spencer had no idea where he’d pulled it from, didn’t have time to even begin to guess before Dean was swearing, loudly, stepping away from the window and walking quickly towards the door. Spencer looked between him and Sam, who was already relaxing, lowering his weapon as if confident that whatever was happening, his brother would handle it. Dean yanked open the door, and then stood aside as another man entered the room, glancing from Sam to Spencer without expression. There had been no sound of a car arriving, so whoever this man was must have arrived on foot, and yet neither Sam nor Dean seemed surprised by this, Dean reaching out to clasp the other man on the shoulder. 

“Thanks for coming Cas,” he said, and Spencer understood why they didn’t seem surprised, though he still didn’t understand how the man had gotten to the cabin. 

“Of course Dean,” the man, Cas, said in response, his voice shockingly low and rough, an unexpected pairing with the tan trenchcoat and poorly buttoned shirt he wore under it. He looked like he worked an office job, a sharp contrast to the Winchesters’ own chosen uniform, and yet there was something about him, something beyond the fact that he was some sort of associate of the Winchesters, that screamed danger at Spencer. When he looked at Spencer again, Spencer had to fight against an instinctive desire to recoil from his attention. “Why is there a man tied to a chair?” he asked, in a voice so devoid of surprise that Spencer wondered just what he’d already seen of the Winchesters, what he’d seen them _do_ , that having a stranger held hostage didn’t even seem to register as unusual. Dean snorted, moving past him to the coffee table, bending and beginning to gather up some papers. 

“He’s a fed,” he said. Cas tilted his head to the side, weirdly reminding Spencer of a bird as he studied Spencer’s face. 

“A fed,” he repeated slowly. 

“Like a cop,” Sam provided, and Cas nodded slowly. 

“Do you need me to take care of him?” he asked, and there was that familiar spike of fear and adrenaline, Spencer’s breaths going tight and fast as the other man continued to regard him, face still devoid of anything other than a faint curiosity. 

“No,” Sam said, seemingly unsurprised by the offer. “We’ve got a handle on it.” Cas glanced from Spencer’s face to the ropes, then back to Sam. 

“I can see that,” he said, and a smile ticked up the corner of Sam’s mouth. 

“Shut up Cas,” Dean interrupted, slapping the papers he’d gathered to the other man’s chest. Cas looked down slowly, Dean’s hand continuing to hold the papers in place until finally he raised his own hand, placing it on top of Dean’s. They stayed like that for a long moment before Dean abruptly pulled his hand free, clearing his throat and glancing back at Sam and Spencer, fast and then away again. “That’s everything we have,” Dean said, voice rough. Cas looked after him as Dean walked back to the other side of the room, face still expressionless. Spencer glanced towards Sam, trying to gauge his reaction to that interaction, but the younger man just looked fond, a small smile lingering on his lips. It disappeared when he began to speak.

“That, and the fact that we think that whatever it is, they’ve been using the teenagers as incubators,” Sam said. Cas frowned. 

“What do you mean?” he asked, looking down at the pages in his hands. He flipped through them, too quickly to have read any of them, before looking back up at Sam. 

“I performed an autopsy on the latest victim today,” Sam said. “There was a sort of… hollow, in her chest, above where her intestines were before they were pulled out.” 

“They pulled them out themselves?” Cas asked. Sam shrugged, glancing at his brother. 

“That’s what the locals figured, since their arms were covered in blood and they were in locked rooms. But there was no sign of what cut open their stomachs–”

“–and that is not a feat that most humans would be capable of,” Cas finished. He was still frowning, staring into space. “There are several creatures which have been known to use humans as incubators, though none quite match what you are describing. Still, if your notes are correct and this is an isolated colony that has been operating here for decades, they may have developed their own rituals and habits.” Spencer blinked, surprised as the other man continued to discuss mythology and monsters with the Winchesters as if they were immutable facts. He had assumed that whatever contacts the brothers might have, whatever groups and factions and carved off bits of society they interacted with, they did not share in the Winchester’s beliefs. After all, it wasn’t as if it was a particularly common genre of paranoid beliefs or conspiracy theories. Aside from the compound that Prentiss and himself had been at in the 90s, he hadn’t heard of anyone else, groups or individuals, that had the same belief in monsters. And yet, here was a man easily discussing the best way to kill potential supernatural creatures with all the affect of an ordinary person discussing the best way to deal with insects infesting their garden. He didn’t know what to make of it, anymore than he knew what to make of the way that this man, Cas, interacted with the Winchesters in general. From the way they spoke, it was clear that they had known each other for a long time, far longer than men such as the Winchesters ought to have been able to maintain connections without paranoia or delusion tainting them and turning them sour, if not deadly. Though he had largely dismissed the construct of there being a dominant or submissive between the brothers, it was strange to watch Sam treat the other man with what was almost a degree of reverence, easily deferring to his suggestions and knowledge. 

Given that this man wasn’t a figure that appeared in the Winchester’s early life or even in Sam’s years at Stanford, and was at least a decade older than the oldest brother, he clearly had become acquainted with the Winchsters sometime more recently in their histories, maybe after their alleged deaths in Colorado. That someone introduced to their insular, co-dependent relationship so late in life could be so well-received by both brothers, brought into their bond and made a part of it was… unheard of, really. Friendships didn’t exist for men like the Winchesters. Alliances, relationships of convenience, acquaintances… but not friendships, and certainly not to the depth that was being revealed in the conversation unfolding in front of him, the way Cas looked at Sam when the other man swayed and abruptly sat back down. The frown on his face as Dean suggested they start poking around in the woods to see if they could stumble across what he described as a nest – the first significant emotion to show on his face. His interactions with Dean, if anything, seemed even stranger than his ones with Sam. While the surprise with Sam lay mostly in his deference towards his opinion, his expertise, that Sam showed the other man, with Dean it was far more extensive. Based on every documented action that Dean Winchester had taken in his entire life, since childhood, his brother was his absolute guiding star, the only person in the world he cared for, the one person he would do literally anything to protect. 

The way that he looked at this man, Cas, belayed that in ways that Spencer would have said were impossible. Over the course of the day Dean had demonstrated a tight control over his facial expressions, better than some of the agents Spencer had worked with even, and yet his entire expression softened when he looked at Cas, the affection on his face so obvious it had to be unconscious, involuntary. It didn’t seem to be one-sided either, the stony-faced stranger staring at Dean with the kind of intensity that spoke to a hunger that went far beyond physical, far beyond casual intimacy. Despite everything that had shifted in the crumbling profile that Spencer had come into this situation with, despite his conversations with both brothers, as he watched Dean speak with Cas, Spencer couldn’t help but be amazed that Sam hadn’t killed the other man, much less seemed to have some degree of affection for him. He was such a clear and obvious threat to his relationship with Dean, his status as Dean’s primary concern, the centre of Dean’s world, that Spencer didn’t understand how Sam hadn’t taken any steps at all to remove the other man. The lack of tension between the two of them seemed to indicate that nothing like that had ever transpired though, and Spencer, with a sense of fatalistic resignation, allowed yet another part of the original profile to wither and fall away. His thought that the only truly accurate part of the profile was the vigilantialism was looking more and more likely though– no, that wasn’t quite right. The brothers were clearly irrationally, suicidally codependent, had such warped self-perceptions that it affected their will to live while also causing them to deify the other. The strange exemption of this man aside, Spencer still had no doubt in his mind that any threat, any true threat, to their brother would cause the other to immediately escalate into the brutal violence that he still knew the two of them were capable of. The rest of it… the rest of it, he would just have to continue to observe them, and hope that something became clear. Hope that he could get out of this alive so that that knowledge gathering would even make a difference. 

“It needs to be blessed obsidian?” Dean asked as Spencer’s attention once again focused entirely on the conversation happening in front of him. Cas nodded. Dean’s eyes cut to his brother. “Do we have anything that would work?” he asked. Sam frowned, thinking. 

“Maybe?” he finally said. “Did we keep the shards from that hunt in New Mexico last year?” 

“Shit,” Dean said. “I can’t remember.” Sam stood. 

“We can check the trunk,” he said, then glanced at Cas. “Do you mind keeping an eye on him?” Cas shook his head, the serious expression on his face not wavering until Dean clapped him on the shoulder on his way past, something shifting as they made eye contact before Dean hurried out of the cabin, Sam following closely behind after giving Cas a look that Spencer couldn’t quite interpret. The brothers gone, the other man turned his attention back to Spencer, examining him again with the strange curiosity he’d shown when he’d first arrived. Spencer stared back at him, wondering if he should risk trying to question an associate of the Winchesters when they were sure to return any minute. In the end, Cas was the one who broke the silence. 

“You do not need to be afraid,” he said, “the Winchesters are good men. They will not hurt you.” Spencer licked his lips, debating his options. 

“How do you know that?” he asked. “How do you know them?” he added, figuring it for both the safest option and the one that might give him the greatest insight into the source of the utter certainty in the other man’s voice. 

“I am the one who raised Dean from perdition,” he answered, voice flat. Spencer blinked at him, utterly nonplussed. “I share a profound bond with him. And Sam Winchester is my friend. Neither of them are a threat to you.” 

“To me,” Spencer clarified, “but not to others?” He didn’t understand what Cas meant when he said he’d raised Dean from perdition, though it did align with both brother’s references to having been to hell before – what it could possibly mean in terms of this man though he had no idea. Had he saved Dean somehow, from someone? Cas leveled him with a look that was somehow both unchanged and full of judgement. 

“They are not a danger to anyone who does not harm others, and they are certainly not a danger to a human such as yourself,” he said. He ran his eyes up and down Spencer. “You are very similar to them,” he added. “You too save people, are braver than most give you credit for.” Spencer swallowed, struck with the sudden sense that this man knew far more about him than he should, than was possible. 

“And you?” he asked. “Are you a danger to me?” 

“No,” he said. “I am not a danger to you Spencer Reid.” Spencer blinked, heart rate kicking up as he tried to figure out if either brother had had the chance to tell this man his name. Spencer opened his mouth to ask what exactly Cas did, but the door banged open before he could say anything more, Cas straightening and both of them looking towards the door. Sam and Dean walked back to stand before Cas and Spencer. 

“We’ve got them,” Sam confirmed. “Thanks again for the intel Cas.” Cas nodded, then glanced back down at Spencer. 

“You’re certain you don’t want me to do something about him?” Cas asked. Dean glanced down at Spencer. 

“No, we’ve got it under control,” he said, “you get back to your… stuff,” he finished. Cas nodded. 

“Thanks for your help,” Sam added and Cas nodded again. 

“Always happy to help the Winchesters,” he said, eyes cutting to Dean, who shifted with obvious discomfort. He made a strange jerking movement before turning, and heading back towards the door. The door slammed behind him, but Spencer couldn’t make out the sound of him crossing the porch, and there was still no sound of a vehicle starting up, leaving him again with the question of how exactly the other man had arrived at the cabin. 

“So,” Dean said, clapping his hands together and making Spencer jump, drawing his attention back to the brothers. Sam had stepped around Spencer, was headed towards the back of the room. “Ready to go do this thing Sammy?” Sam’s voice, coming from behind Spencer, sounded exasperated as he voiced his agreement. Dean stopped in front of Spencer, looking down at him, and Spencer knew what was coming even before Dean opened his mouth. “Sorry dude,” he said. “But we can’t risk you running out on us quite yet.” Spencer nodded, resigned as Dean once again untied him from the chair before herding him back to the bed. He supposed he should just continue to be grateful that they seemed more interested in moving him back and forth across the small cabin than they were in torturing him or cutting him open, but the dull monotony of sitting on the precipice of terror, the thrum of threat and possibility unrelenting and constant beneath it all, was exhausting. It left him with no idea what they might do, when they would do it, and every moment that they did nothing was another moment he spent wondering just when exactly they were going to turn on him. It was only when they’d chained him to the bed again though, and he watched as both brothers shrugged on a thick outer coat, that he fully realized what was happening. 

_They were going hunting._

“Wait,” he said, raising his head up off the bed as much as he was able, mouth dry. “Wait, just–” Sam looked back at him, smiling in a way that sent chills racing up Spencer’s spine. 

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re just going to take care of… it, we’ll be back soon and then it’ll all be over, ok?” Next to him, Dean snorted. 

“Now who’s scaring the civilian,” he muttered, his brother shoved at his shoulder, and then it was like they had completely forgotten about the man they were leaving behind, chained to the bed, the sounds of their bickering drowning out his protests as they left the cabin, the door slamming shut behind them feeling uncomfortably like the entrance closing on a tomb.


	3. Chapter 3

Spencer lay on his back, once again left with nothing but his thoughts, frustrating half theories that failed to line up, no matter how often he tried to string them together. There was an inescapable incoherence, contradiction after contradiction no matter whose point of view he attempted to analyze the brothers from. From the perspective of the law enforcement that had interacted with them, from the evidence that they’d gathered from crime scenes and the rare eye witness, the brothers were killers, raised with blood on their hands and in their heads, vicious and cold; the younger a psychopath with no clear modus operandi other than a desire to kill, the older, held carefully in his brother’s sway, a delusional and broken man who believed he was freeing the word from evil, both of them occasionally stumbling their way into actually stopping the same type of human monster that they themselves were. From the perspective of the witnesses who’d refused to testify against the brothers, who would just repeat over and over again that the Winchesters hadn’t hurt them, hadn’t hurt their family and friends, hadn’t been the ones to rip people apart and cut them into pieces right in front of them, they were vigilantes, protectors, cowboys driving back and forth across the country on their black chrome steed, showing up just in time to save the day and then disappear into the sunset. From Dean’s perspective, they were riding the world of monsters while he himself lay beyond salvation, beyond any hope of redemption; from Sam’s, the same but opposite. That the evil they seemed to inevitably see lived within him, not his brother. Both brothers seemed resigned to death, accepting of damnation, not because of what they did to those they saw as monsters, their vigilantism, the apparent true cause for the violence they wracked, the pain and death and blood that they left behind them like footprints in snow, but because of what they saw within themselves. They had also both been torn apart by the world, by their father, physically and mentally broken into what they were, formed by circumstance and a childhood brimming with pain and fear. And then there was the strange man, Cas, that had shown up out of nowhere, whose bond with the brothers utterly flouted the insular codependency that had allowed them to survive to adulthood, that had kept them so tightly wound around each other ever since. The tension between him and Dean that seemed to transcend the simple friendship that clearly existed between him and Sam – the kind of attraction, a level of affection, that seemed impossible for Dean to have, for Sam to tolerate. Cas himself, with his strange mannerisms, odd way of speaking, apparent sharing of the Winchesters’ beliefs in monster and evil, absolute and unquestionable. From his point of view, the brothers seemed to be the heroes that the witnesses to their acts of violence would purport them to be, the heroes that they didn’t necessarily even see themselves as being. 

_It doesn’t make sense,_ he thought. _None of it makes sense, none of it lines up, not if all of it is true. But what is the falsehood, if it’s not all true? Whose perspective is the most warped, the most inaccurate?_ He didn’t want to but couldn’t help but acknowledge that the analysis offered by him himself, by the BAU and the FBI and every arresting officer that the Winchesters had ever had were the ones that were the outliers, the only ones who didn’t see the brothers as heroes, as saviours and killers all wrapped into one. It was a fact that sat in his chest, uncomfortable and sharp, something impossible to reconcile with everything he’d ever learned about psychology, about killers and the reasons why men turned on each other with a vicious disconnect from their own humanity. The fact that the Winchesters were vigilantes in truth and not just in delusion seemed inescapable at this point, a reality that he could no longer dance around. To what degree it was accurate was the only question that really remained; the how and why of their belief that the men they hunted were not human killers but supernatural creatures the uncertain element that held the shape of their whole world. The question of why, with this certainty of the righteousness of their mission, their kills, they still viewed themselves as worthy of an eternity more of pain and punishment. 

The sound of a door opening drew him from his thoughts, and he looked up with the distant thought that he hadn’t heard the car coming back. The why was revealed as soon as his head was raised enough to see that the man in the doorway wasn’t either of the Winchester brothers, wasn’t Cas either. 

The new man was tall, unusually so, and rail thin, dressed in jeans and a heavily stained shirt that had maybe once been white. He wasn’t wearing shoes, and his hair was long and wild, hanging down in lank strings to brush his shoulders. His skin had a dark tan that spoke to long hours spent in the sun, and his eyes were pale and wide with surprise. He was staring at Spencer, unmoving, and instead of feeling relieved that someone had found him, Spencer found himself dragged under an inexplicable wave of fear, welling up in his chest and choking his throat, his breaths coming fast and tight. He didn’t know why, didn’t understand why this stranger was making his skin feel like it was crawling, why his entire body was screaming at him to run, to get away even though that was impossible, his chains rendering him immobile. Vulnerable. Spencer swallowed, tried to tell himself that he was being irrational. 

“Help me,” he said, not surprised to hear his voice shake slightly as he forced the words from his throat. “Please, call the police.” The man took two small steps closer to Spencer, his eyes still wide in what Spencer was beginning to think wasn’t actually surprise, but was just the way his eyes looked, far too big for his face, bulging out slightly. 

“What a lovely surprise,” the man said in a voice that was unlike anything Spencer had ever heard before, a low rasp undercut by a rattling sort of scrape, like a rusted nail being dragged across concrete. “I thought I would just sit and wait for the Winchesters to return before I ripped them apart but it looks like they’ve left me a snack.” Spencer’s arms jerked against his chains at the man’s words, an instinctive drive to _move_ that just drew the man’s attention to them, made him laugh with a sound like metal snapping. 

“What,” Spencer said, “or, I’m–” he had no idea what he was saying, no idea what to say to someone who just announced that they were going to eat him. The man laughed again, the sound even worse to hear the second time. 

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll only hurt a lot.” Spencer’s arms jerked against his bonds again as the man stepped forward, a single small step at a time. _This is who they’re looking for_ Spencer thought, mind racing as he tried to figure out what he could say, if there was anything he could say, to dissuade this new man from killing him. _This is the man that the Winchesters are hunting as a monster._ Spencer tried not to think about how incredibly unlucky and unlikely it was that he would get kidnapped by two serial killers only to be murdered by a third, unrelated serial killer. He tried not to let his fear lead him down the path that ended with _the Winchesters are right to hunt him_.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “I’m not with the Winchesters, I don’t know them.” The man stepped forward again, running his eyes over the metal chains holding Spencer in place. 

“The Winchesters think they can kill me,” he said. “I wonder what they intend to do with you.” He met Spencer’s eyes and smiled, revealing a mouth full of blackened and broken teeth. Fear shot through him, and he again jerked futility at his restraints. “Must be even worse, if they’re tying you up for later. I’ve heard stories of what they like to do to the things they take home with them. I promise, I’m doing you a favour if I eat you now.” Spencer tried not to show the terror that was quickly filling him on his face. The man took a final step forward, coming up against the edge of the bed. He looked even taller now that he was next to Spencer, towering above him. “You won’t be as tasty as all of those lovely young ones were,” he said, “too old, too chewy. Still, something to gnaw on while I wait. And then I’ll tear the Winchesters apart, limb from limb.” 

“A lot of others have tried to kill them before,” Spencer said, mind racing, hoping to stall, hoping, horribly, impossibly, for the Winchesters to return. “None of them have managed, why do you think you’ll be able to?” 

“Those others weren’t me,” he said. “Besides, they’ve died before. They can die again.” Spencer opened his mouth, no idea what he was going to say, but he didn’t end up getting the chance to say anything at all, a deep voice from the front of the cabin interrupting them. 

“Hey,” the voice said, and both Spencer and the man turned to see Dean standing in the doorway, what looked like a long shard of black rock clenched in his fist. Spencer’s arms jerked against his chains again, harder, an instinctive reaction to the immediate escalation of the situation. 

“Dean Winchester,” the man said, smiling again. “And where’s that devil-touched brother of yours then?” He began to walk towards the front of the cabin, towards Dean. Spencer and Dean’s eyes were both fixed on him as he slowly moved towards Dean, his fingers slowly clenching and releasing as if preparing for a fight. Spencer abruptly realized that the man wasn’t holding a weapon, didn’t seem to be reaching for one, and barely had time to wonder how he expected to fight the Winchesters before there was a movement from the bathroom and Sam appeared in the doorway, hurtling himself across the room to slam into the other man. They tumbled to the floor together in a tangle, the other man letting out an unexpectedly shrill cry as he hit the floor. Dean was moving forward, makeshift blade still at the ready even as Sam raised his own shard of rock. The man beneath him bucked up with a strength that seemed at odds with his thin limbs, sending Sam sprawling backwards across the floor. He lunged to his feet just in time to dodge a swipe from Dean, the blade arching through the air like a shadow. Dean turned at the same time as the other man did, and Spencer abruptly realized that Dean had managed to place himself between both his brother and Spencer and the other man. He barely had a second to wonder if it had been intentional before Dean and the man were both moving again, slamming into each other, one of the man’s hands circling Dean’s throat while the other disappeared between them. Dean made a choked off noise of pain and surprise, body jerking. Sam was already moving though, back on his feet and coming up behind the other man. Spencer didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t make a single noise, just watched with wide, horrified eyes as Sam jammed the blade between two of the man’s ribs and sank it in until his hand was coated with blood. He pulled the shard of stone back out, and then thrust it back in. The man dropped Dean, hands scrabbling to try and dislodge Sam, the grip he hand on his shirt, blood flecking at his mouth as he breathed in rapid, wet breaths. He got his hand around Sam’s wrist but barely had time to even jerk at it once before Dean was slamming his own blade into his chest. Spencer watched, helpless, hands continuing to yank at his chains as the Winchesters stabbed the man over and over again, impaling him on both sides until the floor was completely soaked with blood and the man had stopped so much as twitching. They both pulled their blades out one last time, releasing the grips both of them had kept on the man to keep him still while they butchered him, and the body tumbled to the floor. Both of the Winchesters stared down at him, breathing hard and covered in dark blood. Finally, Dean glanced at his brother. 

“You ok Sammy?” he asked. His brother nodded, and Dean turned and looked towards Spencer next. “How about you, agent? Any permanent damage? Besides the mental scarring or whatever.” Spencer shook his head, feeling dizzy with everything he’d just witnessed, adrenaline still rushing through him like an aftershock. 

“You’re hurt,” Sam said, looking towards Dean’s stomach, to something Spencer couldn’t see. 

“I’m fine,” Dean said, waving his brother off. “Seriously, barely broke the skin, we can deal with it after we take care of this.” He gestured down at the body laying on the floor between the two of them, and Sam seemed to hesitate for a long moment before reluctantly agreeing. Spencer watched, feeling disconnected and shocky as the brothers dropped their blades to the floor, apparently unconcerned by the blood that splattered to the floor from them as they each took ahold of one of the man’s feet and began dragging him towards the door. The motion was so practiced, so well-coordinated, it made Spencer’s stomach roll. They left a long trail of darkly shining blood behind them, all the way out the door. Spencer tried to keep his breathing slow and deep and even, despite the tang of blood that had grown to fill the air of the entire cabin, tried to push down the shock and terror of what he’d just witnessed, painfully aware that what he’d just seen was the Winchesters resolving what they saw as their case, their investigation in town. Now that they’d taken care of that man, all they had left was Spencer. He needed to be okay, to be able to think, to be able to speak to them and he couldn’t do that if he was panicking, if he went into shock. 

He could hear, distantly, the sounds of the Winchesters moving around outside, scraping and wood breaking in patterns that he couldn’t decipher, couldn’t even begin to guess at what actions they corresponded to. The Winchesters behaviour was so disparate, so unpredictable, that he had no idea which of their myriad of methods they might have picked for the man’s body. It was a long time before he finally got his answer, the crackle of fire replacing the sounds of movement, and the smell of burning meat began to leak into the room. Nausea rolled through him, familiar and unwelcome. The combined smell of the man’s body burning and the blood still lingering in the air was overwhelming, making Spencer’s entire body scream with the need to be released, to escape, to be outside and breathing clean, open air. He realized that his hands were jerking uselessly against the cuffs without his conscious permission, realized with a detached sort of interest that they were already turning black with bruises, were slightly slick with blood from where his earlier struggles had apparently broken skin. 

When the Winchesters came back inside they were still covered in blood, and both looked utterly exhausted. Their eyes followed the smear of blood across the floor back to where Spencer still lay, trapped and helpless, now their only remaining victim. He took a deep, slow breath, and tried to tell himself that whatever happened next, it would be okay. He would survive, because that was what he did. He had faced down death too many times for this to be it, to die helpless and alone in the middle of nowhere. His mind reminded him of his earlier conclusion, that the Winchesters saw them as being on the same side as him, that they probably didn’t hurt people that they didn’t see as evil, but a larger part of him identified that sort of hope as dangerous, something that would make the end all the more painful for it’s betrayal. The Winchesters walked across the room towards him, and Spencer sucked in a sharp breath. Dean glanced at him, then back at his brother.

“Dibs first shower,” he said. Sam scowled but didn’t argue, just watched as his brother headed over to the small bathroom before sighing and heading over to the kitchen area. He came back with a large black garbage bag, set it on the floor and began stripping. Spencer was caught once more by the large number of scars decorating Sam’s skin, looking all the more gruesome for the blood that had sunk through his clothing, smearing across his skin. He stuffed his clothing into the bag as he took them off, and Spencer wondered if they were planning on burning them, or dumping them elsewhere. Sam opened the door to the bathroom once he was down to his briefs, and grabbed his brother’s clothing off the floor, adding them to the bag and stepping around the smear of blood to deposit it next to the door. He barely had time to glance towards Spencer before the bathroom door was opening again, letting out a small cloud of steam and his brother, skin flushed pink with the heat. They nodded at each other, and Sam took his brother’s place, closing the door behind him. Dean didn’t look at Spencer as he made his way over to their bags and pulled out clean clothes. Like his brother, Dean was mottled with scars, the most dramatic of which was what looked like a burn, shaped like a human hand, that covered his entire shoulder and curled around his upper arm. Spencer stared at it, unable to imagine what could have made it, how the burn could have created such an exact handprint while also curving around and over muscle and bone. 

When Sam emerged from the shower he mirrored his brother, walking over to the bags and getting dressed. As soon as he’d grabbed his clothing though, Dean grabbed the bags, and Spencer watched as he began packing up everything they had scattered around the cabin with an efficiency that spoke to a lifetime of repetition. It became even more obvious once Sam joined him what a well worn dance this was, neither of them going for the same thing at once, both of them moving around each other with practiced ease, neither of them stepping on the blood covering the floor. They came and went, carrying their things outside, to, Spencer assumed, the car. Every time the door opened or shut a fresh wave of smoke and smell slunk into the room, making Spencer’s body revolt, a combination of exhaustion and fear and simple revulsion for what he knew the smoke to contain, the smells to be. He couldn’t believe it hadn’t even been a full day, that the sky outside was just now finishing fading into night. It felt like it had been days, weeks, months that he’d spent with the Winchesters, every single bizarre thing that had happened impossible to collapse into such a short period of time. The steadily growing collection of things that he didn’t have answers for just piling higher and higher that entire time. Though, he thought as the brothers returned, everything finally removed from the cabin including the bag of bloody clothes, there was at least one question that he was about to find out the answer for. The brothers headed towards him, again stepping neatly around the drying smears of blood. Dean picked up a chair on his way over, setting it on the floor next to the bed. 

“You good?” he asked Spencer, and Spencer nodded. Dean pulled out his gun, scrubbed his free hand over his face, and nodded towards his brother, who stepped up to the bed and began unlocking the cuffs binding Spencer in place, wincing when he saw the bruises and blood staining his wrists. 

“Sorry,” he said as he pulled the cuffs off, making Spencer wince. Dean’s eyes flicked to his hands, then back to his face. 

“Sorry you had to see that,” he added. “We didn’t… we didn’t know it knew we were here, or we wouldn’t have left you.” _It_ , Spencer thought. 

“It’s fine,” he said, and then, because it was true, “I’ve seen worse.” Sam dropped the last of the chains to the bed and Spencer stood, following Dean’s gesture to the chair. He looked back and forth between them, painfully aware that this was likely the last chance he would have at escape, but he was completely hemmed in by the brothers, Dean’s hold on the gun loose but steady, aimed directly at Spencer. Looking into his eyes though, Spencer was hit with something closer to instinct than rational thought, than any logical, profile and psychology based conclusion, a conviction that the brothers did not intend to hurt them. So, he sat, and hoped that he hadn’t just made a terrible error in judgement. He met Dean’s steady gaze as Sam rebound him to the chair, before picking up and pocketing the cuffs. Dean put his gun away as soon as Spencer was secured, then pulled Spencer’s cell phone out of his pocket. He put the chip back in, made sure it was turned on, then held it up so Spencer could see that it was on as well, before tossing it over onto the bed. 

“We’re going to head out now,” Dean said. “We’ll call the cops to come pick you up in a couple of hours.” Spencer was abruptly, viscerally reminded of being in the exact same situation, decades ago; bound to a chair by one of the Winchester brothers, and left, waiting for the police to come and rescue him. The parallel was strange, an echo of a past version of the brothers that was so distant they might as well have been other people. 

The feeling of relief when he heard sirens ringing out through the dark an indeterminate time later was familiar to that first encounter, as was the hollow feeling of failure, of there having been more he could have, should have, done. The empty, desolate feeling of failing to help where he could have, of letting people maybe not yet beyond salvation slip through his fingers, the second chance he never thought he’d had ending exactly the same as the first. 

He doubted he would ever see the brothers again.

_We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap for this series! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed :))


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